Water Is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singlehood

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Author: Jana Marguerite Bennett

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Water Is Thicker Than Blood

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Water Is Thicker Than Blood An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness

jana marguerite bennett

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2008

1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright # 2008 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bennett, Jana Marguerite, 1975– Water is thicker than blood : an Augustinian theology of marriage and singleness / Jana Marguerite Bennett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-531543-1 1. Marriage—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30–600. 2. Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. I. Title. BT706.B46 2008 234'.165—dc22 2007019997

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

To the small households that have formed me in Christian life, especially: Ann and Steve Bennett, and Elissa Brine, the Nada Carmelites, the Iredell House community, and Joel Schickel


Preface

I first began thinking about this book while on retreat at a Carmelite monastery, before I ever decided to study theology. I found myself gripped by twin conflicting societal ideals: one was the thought, gleaned from a few years of educational formation, that I could not be a complete person (especially as a woman in this patriarchal culture) unless I was an individual, free to do whatever seemed right and good to me within the bounds of state laws and common decency; the second was the conviction, based on enticing magazines at the grocery checkout stand, that I could not be complete (especially with that ever-present female biological clock) unless I was dating, falling madly and passionately in love, planning the wedding of my dreams (never mind that I had never dreamed of weddings), and starting to work on building my family. Carmelites are traditionally hermits and spend part of their time in solitude and contemplation, but also part of their time in community. While watching the monks, both men and women, go about their days, living lives that acknowledged the individual but also the dependence that each had on the other, I began to think that perhaps there was another way to conceive of the world and my place in it, and also to rethink what it means to be married or single, male or female, citizen or homebody. Those first thoughts eventually led me to take up these questions in an academic way. I became suspicious of these two ideals: the overidealization of marriage and the vapid individualism that appeared over and over again, each competing for

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conceptual space in culture (in television shows like Sex and the City), academic study (in the myriad books written, many by theologians, about marriage and family), and governmental policy (in the fury with which politicians engage questions about individual liberties on the one hand, and marriage and family laws on the other). My theological study provided other arguments and other answers to this cultural conundrum, some of which are presented in this book and that I find give a more sane account of the world. In particular, the Christian practice of baptism, the scriptural worldview, and the Christian member’s place in the Body of Christ helped me reflect differently about marriage, family, gender concerns, politics, and being single. These reflections appear in this book via another theologian who muses on some of the same issues and finds similar benefits in having a Christian theological worldview: Augustine of Hippo. Augustine will seem an unlikely conversation partner, I know, especially to those who see his thought as backward in our supposedly more progressive time. Strange as it may seem, I have found Augustine to be a delightful conversation partner and one who is nearly always attentive to people’s relationships with God and each other. Augustine provides no overly idealistic view: he pays notice to failed relationships as well as ones that work; to divorces and troublesome monks as well as the famed three good ends of marriage. On my view, that is a pretty good reason to observe Augustine’s thought and think with him about relationships in our own troubled world. I owe much to the people who have accompanied me on this intellectual journey. Some of them are Stanley Hauerwas (my dissertation adviser), Willie Jennings, Reinhard Huetter, Amy Laura Hall, Warren Smith, L. Gregory Jones, D. Stephen Long, L. Edward Phillips, and Dwight Vogel. The Duke theology women’s group was also influential, and many of its members read or discussed parts of this book: Margaret Adam, Kathryn D. Blanchard, Holly Taylor Coolman, Dana Dillon, Rosalee Ewell, Beth Felker Jones, Rachel Maxson, Sarah Musser, and Laura Yordy. Colleagues in the New Wine New Wineskins young Catholic moral theologians group were also gracious enough to hear or read parts of this manuscript in its early stages, and other colleagues at Duke, Hampden-Sydney College, and elsewhere provided much-needed second eyes or other support: Robert Hall, Jeff McCurry, Melissa Musick Nussbaum, Jennifer Peters McCurry, and J. Michael Utzinger. Gerald Carney provided particular help with technical details. The book in published form could not have been completed without Gerry Randall (Interlibrary Loan Librarian) and Cynthia Read and the other editors at Oxford University Press. A faculty research grant in the summer of 2006 from Hampden-Sydney College enabled me to finish revisions to the manuscript.

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This book is a revision of my doctoral dissertation at Duke University. The Augustinian Heritage Institute has graciously given permission to reprint several quotations from its twenty-first-century translations of Augustine’s work, especially, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, and the treatises The Good of Marriage, Holy Virginity, and The Excellence of Widowhood. Likewise, quotations from Augustine’s Confessions are from Henry Chadwick’s translation, reprinted with the permission of Oxford University Press. I would be remiss if I did not also acknowledge the church communities and the ‘‘small households’’ that have also seen me through this project: Phillips United Methodist Church in Lakewood, Colorado; Immaculate Conception Parish and the Duke Newman Center in Durham, North Carolina; and St. Theresa’s Parish in Farmville, Virginia. Several monastic and ‘‘New Monastic’’ communities have been instrumental for my thinking: the Nada Carmelites, Daylesford Abbey, St. John’s Abbey, Rutba House, and Iredell House. To my husband, parents, sister, grandmothers, aunts and uncles, wonderful in-laws, and all the numerous other small households that have formed me in Christ—thank you.


Contents

Part I. Preliminary Arguments for a Theology of Households 1. How ‘‘Theology of Marriage’’ Damages Ecclesiology, 3 2. Seeing the World with Augustine: Word, Story, and Worship, 33 Part II. Intertwining Households: States of Life in Salvation History 3. Marriage in Creation, Fall, and Redemption: Against Gendered Dichotomies, 55 4. Neither Married nor Given in Marriage: Singleness and Salvation History, 83 Part III. Christians’ Eschatological Home 5. Households Expanding: Eschatological Visions of Christ, 115 6. The Political Household of God: Against the Public/ Private Dichotomy, 135 7. At Home in Christ: Living as Citizen-Households, 157 Notes, 191 Selected Bibliography, 225 Index, 239


part i

Preliminary Arguments for a Theology of Households


1 How ‘‘Theology of Marriage’’ Damages Ecclesiology

There is a cultural frenzy regarding marriage, and it has overtaken theology. It has become a mesmerizing issue in contemporary culture, in part because there seem to be so many failures at it. Every day, there is a newspaper article proclaiming the high divorce rate and the myriad ways in which children are affected by divorce. There are numerous academic and political think tanks around the country devoted to the singular question: how do we, in Western society, fix marriage? In addition to these reports there are other considerations about marriage in contemporary culture. Many feminist scholars have pointed out that marriage as traditionally conceived only serves to exacerbate gender issues and that some groups that want to ‘‘fix marriage’’ are really advocating an unhelpful return to genderspecific roles. To still others, marriage has quite simply become a superfluous institution: it is nothing more than a means to tax breaks, but it offers no other real benefits because it is no longer a necessary means for regulating society. In previous eras, marriage and family were more definitely institutions that helped society function, these scholars say; nowadays, though, we are a society of strong men and women quite capable of living on our own. Why bring marriage in to complicate matters? In considering the very complex problem of marriage, we also consider that there are many people who would like to be married but find themselves legally unable to do so, as in the case of gay marriage. Anywhere a person turns, there

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preliminary arguments for a theology of households

will be some article on marriage, or love in marriage, or sex in marriage, or remaining friends after a divorce, and so on and so forth. Theologians follow the cultural frenzy by participating in a frenzy of their own, each attempting to address the myriad problems that marriage brings with it. Nearly all books that deal with both theology and marriage/family/ household today begin with an account of what is wrong with marriage sociologically, and thus consider marriage along some of the same lines as the culture does, questing to and fro for answers to the ‘‘divorce problem,’’ the issue of children in single-parent families, and the like. For example, Stephen Post, ethicist and author of several books and articles on marriage and family, writes: ‘‘In a time when social science points to how important marriage and family are for the health of society, how can a culture lacking any clear affirmation of more lasting marital unions ever contribute to that health?’’1 He then goes on to suggest some of the many problems that arise when discussing marriage, relating to divorce and the rise of blended families, and gender equality. Likewise, John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Familiaris consortio asserts that families are in deep trouble in modern life, stating at the beginning: ‘‘The family in the modern world, as much as and perhaps more than any other institution, has been beset by the many profound and rapid changes that have affected society and culture.’’2 Among these are a rising divorce rate and ‘‘a mistaken theoretical and practical concept of the independence of the spouses in relation to each other.’’3 My concern is not that these theologians identify numerous problems with marriage and family; those problems do exist. Yet I am not convinced that the solution to those problems is to narrow the focus more and more toward marriage and family. Does such tunnel vision help? I wish to step away from our heightened sense of marriage and family as singular institutions and ask instead: ‘‘What is the nature of the church?’’ and ‘‘How does marriage and family relate to the church?’’ These two questions lead to further considerations: that the Christian church is not composed only of the married, and does not exist mostly for the moral education of young children, though these would seem to be primary functions by even a cursory glance at most churches’ bulletins. If we begin, then, with questions about the church, this necessarily leads us to think about relationships with all the church’s people, single as well as married. In this chapter, I look at the arguments of some prominent theologies of marriage as a way of beginning to address how the focus on marriage is misplaced and problematic, ecclesiologically. Using these theologies, I then identify some specific theological questions that need to be addressed in order to answer my questions about the nature of the church and its relationship to

how ‘‘theology of marriage’’ damages ecclesiology

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marriage, family, and singleness. I conclude with a beginning argument toward a theology of households rather than a theology of marriage. The following theologies are by no means exhaustive of the vast literature that exists regarding marriage and family. The theologians mentioned here are scholars who are highly influential for contemporary views on marriage, and they are people who take seriously the importance of marriage as an institution, and so are helpful for this conversation.

Religion, Culture, and Family Project One of the most strident and publicly accessible voices on the question of marriage and religion has been the Religion, Culture, and Family Project, which is supported by the Lilly Endowment and directed by Don Browning at the University of Chicago. Its primary purpose is to deal effectively with the current crisis among families, as seen in rising divorce rates, parental absence due to careers, and the addition of an ever more mobile culture in America,4 which reduces the ties families have to traditional supports such as extended family and neighbors. These cultural issues and the subsequent political and societal reactions to the crisis (in the form of laws, family advocacy programs, and the like) have been recognized for a long time. What has been missing, claims the group, are religious voices that can also provide ‘‘valuable theological, ethical, and institutional resources to help revitalize North American family culture and families.’’5 Browning, together with literally hundreds of prominent religious and theological voices, has the aim of showing how adding religious resources to the already existing resources may ‘‘fix’’ the crisis that is the contemporary family. The implication is that the social and cultural attempts to ‘‘fix’’ the family have not been quite enough; perhaps religious resources will provide a needed boost. As director, Browning has one of the most prominent voices in the Religion, Culture, and Family Project, and some of the phrases he uses show up in others’ works.6 He argues that in the American political arena, the family and its problems, including high divorce rates and same-sex marriage, have been debated by sociologists and politicians, but religion has rarely been included because of its perceived private nature. He supports the view that religion has a private nature; however, he thinks that religion (and by religion he means Christianity but also other ‘‘world religious traditions’’) offers beneficial ways to support good family structures. Browning advocates including religion in the discussion and details a number of ways this might happen, especially dialogue between members of all world religions, in an effort to address the

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huge issues facing us with respect to the family. (On this point, he mostly means divorce and its effects on children.) Thus, Browning uses Ju¨rgen Habermas’s understanding of the nature of dialectic as a way forward. As he suggests: In both politics and family life, there needs to be an ethic governing how we talk to one another—an ethic of conversation and dialogue. And the ethic for these two very different spheres is, strangely enough, more similar than one would think. Both entail an ethics of equal regard, mutual respect, equal right to speak, equal concern with the other’s good, and equal obligation to listen and see the other’s point of view as nearly as possible.7 The idea of ‘‘mutual regard’’ is placed in direct opposition to the dominant economic and political means for dealing with modernity and global capitalism, namely, individual and corporate utilitarianism (which he sees as the ‘‘manipulation and increase of the goods of wealth and honor’’).8 That is, on Browning’s view, ‘‘the love ethic of equal regard . . . makes the value of all persons—men, women, and children—the highest end of both domestic and public life.’’9 Such a ‘‘love ethic’’ is borne by dialogue between various groups, including the government and the family. Dialogue is also important with respect to other religious traditions. One of Browning’s central questions in Marriage and Modernity is how Christianity ought to deal with religions that are treating similar issues regarding marriage and family related to modernization and globalization. One of his answers is to show how other religious traditions likewise uphold an ethic of equal regard. Ultimately, Browning seems less interested in bringing religion ‘‘into the conversation’’ than in demonstrating how religion as a general idea and Christianity in particular uphold equality and certain other feminist aims with respect to the family. He sees, for instance, that the ‘‘liberal’’ notions that feminists brought to bear on family were upheld by Jesus and Paul; in fact, he advocates resisting ‘‘the reactionary hierarchical and gendered messages of the later pastoral epistles’’ in favor of the teachings of Jesus and Paul, both of whom represent a more free and more egalitarian vision of humanity.10 On his view, ‘‘early Christianity refashioned a new model of manhood based on servant leadership, eliminated unilateral patriarchal divorce, elevated the leadership role of women, and rejected the double standard on sexual behavior that permitted men privileges and license that it denied to women.’’11 He notes at several points that gender equality is a theme that runs throughout his book; the problem is most often marked squarely as a problem about men and their conceptions of themselves over against feminist claims for gender equality.


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There is an entire chapter, for instance, on the male problematic in Aquinas’s and Luther’s views on family and marriage. Browning is not wrong to promote gender equality in families; I will suggest later in this book that gender inequality is a sign of the fall and is not ultimately the way in which God created or ordered humanity. I do, however, want to question whether Browning’s argument for promoting gender equality with respect to the whole morass of families, politics, religion, and globalization is the most helpful with respect to feminist theorizing or, more important, the most theologically fruitful for discussion about Christian households. With respect to feminist theorizing, Browning has focused almost exclusively on feminist scholars who put forth a view of liberalism, especially rights language.12 The problem here is that gender equality in families appears as the driving force and foundation for all other considerations of the family, be those considerations biblical or theological grounds for such equality or the resources that other religious traditions might have for advocating gender equality.13 In terms of Browning’s desire for a dialogue between various publics, then, the dialogue is clearly one-sided. Browning makes liberal use of feminist theory of a particular stripe in order to try forcing religion into particular conversations among academicians, politicians, and sociologists, all of whom he assumes to hold a similar value of gender equality; but there has not yet been reciprocity from feminist scholars. For example, Martha Nussbaum and Susan Moller Okin, both of whom are mentioned frequently in Browning’s work, are not much interested in conversations about religion. Okin, in particular, relates a fair amount of hostility to religion and the possibility of gender equality. She writes that an ‘‘important connection between culture and gender is that most cultures have as one of their principal aims the control of women by men. Consider, for example, the founding myths of Greek and Roman antiquity, and of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: they are rife with attempts to justify the control and subordination of women.’’14 The decided lack of dialogue between Browning and the people he most champions is related to a second problem, which is the connection, or lack thereof, between what he sees as politics and the family. On Browning’s view, what is considered domestic (the family) and what is considered political (the state and society in general) both should have the same ends of a ‘‘love ethic of equal regard.’’ Religion appears, in this dialogue between family and politics, as the middleman capable of mediating between the two, with the aim of promoting this ideal love ethic. That is, religion has certain ideas to offer either ‘‘side,’’ including but not limited to the second half of the Great Commandment (Love your neighbor as yourself ) and renarrated versions of the New Testament, Aquinas, and Luther that are in keeping with the ideal of stable,

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equal-regard mutuality in both spheres.15 This middleman status places religion in an awkward stance, however, because it appears almost as though religion is meant to be the placating arbiter between opposing parties. The difficulty with the middleman idea is that religion is not neutral on issues of marriage and family, and moreover, this conception puts marriage as an institution on equal footing with the church and state as institutions. ‘‘Marriage,’’ ‘‘state,’’ and ‘‘family’’ could be compared to three billiard balls, each capable of knocking into the other balls on the table, but none really guiding the others. Part of the argument in this book, however, will be that religion and family, and more specifically the church and family, have a deeper relationship than is implied on this view. Theologically, we can take the critique one step further to consider that the path the Religion, Culture, and Family Project sets is a falsely eschatological one. The overriding, primary eschatological questions are not what makes a good marriage or even how marriage is to be lived rightly (though both are questions that should be asked), but questions about what we have hope in and why we have hope in it. The crucial difference between the first set of questions and the second set is that the focus becomes about God rather than about the nature of a human institution. Browning’s concerns about gender issues, equality within a marital relationship, and stability within that relationship deal primarily with the critiques raised by feminist theorists over the past few decades, and are subsequently important for how he understands theological anthropology, and especially woman as a creature of God but these concerns are not truly ultimate.16 I claim, however, that Browning, among others, has made these concerns ultimate precisely by suggesting that the savior of the world, or at least of our broken American society, must be a good, functioning family. As Browning says in an overview article on the Web site for the Religion, Culture, and Family Project: The causes of the contemporary family crisis are multiple. The solutions and strategies of attack must be multiple as well. . . . Antidotes to modern individualism must be advanced without undermining the rights of women and men to participate in vocations outside the home. Furthermore, religio-cultural resources for halting the male drift away from families and parenthood must be found.17 The entire focus of the multiple solutions for our culture is ‘‘the family.’’ In our time, the ‘‘good family’’ has become the vision not yet attained, not only in terms of ‘‘religion’’ but also from a legal viewpoint. Here is where the false eschatological vision becomes especially poignant. John Witte Jr., a legal


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scholar working with the Religion, Culture, and Family Project, exhorts people to attend to the needs and responsibilities of marriage from a legal standpoint in concert with religion. He says, ‘‘Marriage, of course, is just a piece of paper, and it turns essentially on that certificate. But a lottery ticket is also just a piece of paper, and when it has a winning number on it that piece of paper is worth a lot.’’18 Witte thereby implies that marriage and children are worth a lot, but furthermore, that the beneficial nature, as well as the rights and responsibilities of marriage and family, are assumed solely in a piece of paper. For the state and the law, the family has emerged as a problem especially in relation to civil unions and gay adoptions that have filled media space in recent months. In America, the state holds much of the power to grant the right to be a family. It gets to decide who constitutes a family; this becomes an issue especially because those who are considered married receive several benefits from the government that are not accessible to those whom the state deems ‘‘single,’’ ‘‘divorced,’’ or ‘‘unmarried.’’ The state also makes decisions about the family in terms of the legal ramifications of divorce and child custody. Adjudication takes place between lawyers and in courts of law rather than between the people who share that life. Because of the economic and social costs involved in these questions, the state has a great stake in having particular kinds of families that will develop and enhance society rather than detract from it. As George W. Bush said in his first term, ‘‘Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. . . . Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society.’’19 The state undergirds the family and Christians have bought into that ideal. The family, particularly one of a husband, wife, and children, has become the ideal to strive toward, in the hope that if we all can be part of good families we can be a better society. Good marriage, in other words, has become necessary for modern Christians and for modern society, but this is readily identified as being in conflict with the gospel, especially Matthew 22:30: ‘‘for in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.’’ Thus it is that on Browning’s view, and that of the Religion, Culture, and Family Project, the family is viewed as both problem and solution for social ills only loosely connected to religious resources, rather than being viewed theologically, in relation to Christ, first, and only subsequently as a social institution.20 Religion becomes an added source among many, rather than a way to see the world and especially the family.

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The Domestic Church Some Protestant theologians have thus treated marriage and family to the point of overidealizing it, making marriage and family theologically problematic. Some Roman Catholic theologians have made similar moves in their reflections on the ‘‘domestic church.’’ Under the guidance of Vatican II (particularly Lumen gentium, where the phrase comes into common usage), Roman Catholic theologians (and those from other denominations) have done tremendous work describing the family as ‘‘the domestic church.’’21 As Michael Fahey notes, in recent years ‘‘the expression ‘domestic church’ has become a familiar way of describing the Christian family, especially the ‘traditional’ family encompassing husband and wife together with children.’’22 This move toward ‘‘domestic church’’ has been largely unhelpful because it has put forth a phrase for marriage, family, and household that is grammatically and theologically inconsistent, as I shall attempt to demonstrate in this section. Historically, the introduction of ‘‘domestic church’’ into theological vocabulary caused some consternation. The Italian bishop Pietro Fiordelli, who had done much work with the Christian Family Movement in the mid-twentieth century, was a major proponent at Vatican II of using the phrase ‘‘small church’’ or ‘‘minuscule church.’’ As Fahey narrates it, the Thirty-fourth General Congregation at Vatican II was writing the first draft of ‘‘On the Church.’’ Fiordelli suggested that, as part of this document, there needed to be a section on marriage and family because these were, in Fahey’s words, ‘‘at the heart of church life.’’23 Fiordelli supported his claims for consideration of Christian families as miniature churches, and as subdivisions of local parishes, by using John Chrysostom’s sermons as well as Augustine’s work.24 As such, claimed Fiordelli, the family is ‘‘a sort of small church expressing the mystery of unity and love between Christ and the church.’’25 The Second Vatican Council changed some of his language, particularly by including the phrase ‘‘domestica Ecclesia’’ in the draft. Fiordelli spoke against this change, saying that ‘‘the idea is a good one, but the expression, apparently Pauline, although Paul is not cited, had its own proper historical context which is altogether different from the treatment of matrimony here under discussion. Therefore instead of ‘domestic church’ we should say small church, as do the Fathers.’’26 Nonetheless, the phrase remained in the draft and in the later document that came to be known as Lumen gentium. Fahey concludes his brief historical essay on ‘‘domestic church’’ by noting its use in other Vatican II documents, as well as John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Familiaris consortio and the U.S.


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bishops’ statement ‘‘Follow the Way of Love.’’ Fahey suggests that the term’s advent in theological conversation at Vatican II served to balance the overemphasis on marriage as a contract at the Council of Trent.27 I introduce Fahey’s historical account of ‘‘domestic church’’ because Bishop Fiordelli’s original complaint is well placed and related to another concern: ‘‘domestic church,’’ in whatever way that might have been meant at Vatican II, is more confusing grammatically than is ‘‘small church.’’ ‘‘Small church,’’ when used to describe the family, connotes more of the sense Fiordelli meant when he first brought up the subject, in that it he seems to mean that marriage and family are related to the church ontologically. That is, echoing Ephesians, the family as ‘‘small church’’ or the ‘‘minuscule church’’ shows, in its very character, the mystery of the union of Christ and the church. Marriage and family are moreover a subset of the church and as such can bear the name ‘‘church.’’ Marriage is a participation in the mystery of Christ and the church; it is participation in the life of God. The family as domestic church does not readily display the same use of language; it bypasses at least half of the descriptions of what the church is, given that the church is named both the Household of God and the City of God; ‘‘domestic’’ might connote household but does not typically connote ‘‘city,’’ ‘‘citizen,’’ or ‘‘political.’’ ‘‘Domestic church’’ in use potentially limits the Christian understanding of family and theological connotations of the church that are evident elsewhere in the Vatican II documents. ‘‘Domestic church’’ is therefore more open to interpretations (as Fiordelli notes regarding Paul) that less correctly follow what the Vatican II fathers appeared to mean by ‘‘domestic church’’ (especially in the ways that they connected ‘‘domestic church’’ directly to John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo). In the following, I demonstrate some of the various ways in which ‘‘domestic church’’ has been used and why most of these uses have been unhelpful, theologically speaking. James and Kathleen McGinnis, founders of the Catholic group Parenting for Peace and Justice Network, offer one of the more popular views of ‘‘domestic church’’ in relation to social justice. They argue that the Catholic Church must ‘‘empower families to engage in the Church’s social mission’’ and that the way to do this properly is by helping families ‘‘see themselves as ‘domestic church’ and all that such a vision implies.’’28 On their view, there are three ways in which the church and parents can foster such a vision: (1) spiritual growth and nurture, (2) community and worship, and (3) mission. Families engage the first way when they develop the ‘‘social virtues which every society needs,’’ which especially means ‘‘affirmation’’ of children’s gifts and nurturing of children’s emotional, intellectual, and spiritual lives.29 They

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suggest here that ‘‘ just as the parish church is a site or source of grace, so too is the domestic church.’’30 The second way of fostering domestic church is by praying and worshiping, not only in church but as families, for example, in table grace. For the McGinnises, worship at the parish church is primarily a way to provide community; therefore, worship in families is a way to foster community. Such worship leads, ideally, to holding family meetings at which children have input along with adults. Finally, family is called upon to be the vision of the domestic church by practicing mission. Here, families are called upon to care for the earth and challenge consumption (via recycling and ‘‘alternative gift-giving’’),31 as well as fostering a multicultural atmosphere and encouraging war protests and letter-writing campaigns.32 The church and the ‘‘domestic church’’ thus parallel each other in a one-to-one correspondence; if the church is ‘‘x,’’ then the family must also be ‘‘x.’’ One problem is that this vision is too simplistic because it does not give a thick enough account of what it means to be church (for example, where is Christ in their description?) beyond vaguely associating church with the activities mentioned here; households, too, need a thicker theological account of their relationships with the church. Lisa Sowle Cahill offers an argument about ‘‘domestic church’’ that also juxtaposes Christian moral formation to social justice. She works historically with John Chrysostom’s sermons on marriage and family to show that he links household living to the uses of money, suggesting that for him, the central sin was greed rather than lust (which she claims for Augustine). John Chrysostom wrote to the very affluent families in his region and, on Cahill’s view, proposed ‘‘a replacement model of household management for Christians. Marriages are not to be arranged for political or mercenary motives. ‘You must consider that marriage is not a business venture but a fellowship for life.’ ’’33 Cahill helpfully suggests that this fellowship is an important basis for understanding human relationships, and thus she connects ‘‘domestic church’’ to ‘‘a highly social ethic,’’34 which for her is centered on love of neighbor, particularly in terms of care for the poor and concern for women’s equality. As she says later, ‘‘A gospel identity should convert families to love the neighbor and serve others. Yet historically, the so-called Christian family has often been co-opted by existing social structures, especially those that reproduce economic and gender inequities.’’35 Because of social structures related to families, then, the domestic church has been unable to participate fully in love of neighbor. Citing Margaret Farley, Cahill suggests that since the Catholic Church does not offer ‘‘ ‘coequal discipleship which was part of the original vision of Christianity,’ ’’36 the idea of ‘‘domestic church’’ has not caught on in North America. Justice, here, means justice economically as well as for entrenched gender inequalities; households


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as they now exist cannot truly be part of the apostolic vision. Cahill’s description of ‘‘domestic church’’ offers a more complex view than the McGinnises’ of how families are linked to social justice; but that focus on social justice likewise limits the theological discussion of families. We can appreciate the McGinnises’ and Cahill’s visions of the ‘‘domestic church,’’ for these are views that generate families oriented toward common Christian goods like peace and economic and political justice. However, here as with the Religion, Family and Culture Project, politics is seen as something to which the church must be correlated, via activities of its members residing in socially responsible households. The church and the political sphere in which justice occurs are separate, though connected via ‘‘social justice’’ activities in which families take part. Interestingly, the conception here overturns the predominant narrative about families. The church may enter the public sphere of politics and of justice through families, which are seen as private in contemporary American discourse, but which are seen as more generally public in Familiaris consortio. Another question for all those authors mentioned earlier in this chapter is what constitutes ‘‘domestic’’ in the phrase ‘‘domestic church’’? Other than the fact that they are dealing with families, and therefore with what is domestic, there is little or no mention of what many people would readily describe as domestic, that is, washing, ironing, cooking, eating, paying bills, arguing, and the like. For both Cahill and the McGinnises, the exhortation to families is to become more ‘‘publicly’’ engaged in their activities. It is a good vision, but it is also one that many families have found too idealistic. David Matzko McCarthy suggests, ‘‘They might be asking too much of family when most of us are trying to get through the day without anyone hurt. We ought not expect family to redeem or carry the moral weight of the world.’’37 A second critique, though, is that the socially oriented domestic church family does not have a strong enough connection to the church universal. This is, I suggest, largely due to the term ‘‘domestic church’’ itself and the confusion that the term engenders. While Cahill and the McGinnises present a view that is attractive for many who want to ascribe stronger moral formation (especially in justice) to families and the communities in which they reside, it also falls short of ‘‘expressing the mystery of unity and love between Christ and the church,’’ as Fiordelli put it (and as John Chrysostom suggests). There is no strong, clear connection between what they suggest and the church universal. What is being suggested could be done by any family, Christian or not, that wants to foster peace and justice practices. This way of living is possible, probably beneficial, and not antithetical to the gospel, but decidedly lacking in the deep undertones of theological character, even liturgical character, that are

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part of John Chrysostom’s statements and Augustine’s. The connections are made between the church and the domestic church, but these connections are largely sociological ones: the church is a place where social justice and mission happen, therefore the family should be too. Though both Cahill and the McGinnises mention worship, there is little mention beyond table grace of specific characteristics of the church, such as its liturgical life and sacraments, or of the centrality that baptism appears to have in Lumen Gentium in relation to the domestic church.38 Familiaris consortio, for that matter, consistently uses the phrase ‘‘domestic church’’ with respect to ‘‘ecclesial communion’’ and prayer life, and not with ‘‘social justice,’’ though this latter phrase does appear in the document and is ascribed to families. This lack of considering worship is part of what makes ‘‘domestic church’’ problematic.39 Lumen gentium suggests further that ‘‘domestic church’’ is a fitting description for those who are married and have families, and it makes clear that there is some connection: Finally, Christian spouses, in virtue of the sacrament of Matrimony, whereby they signify and partake of the mystery of that unity and fruitful love which exists between Christ and His Church, help each other to attain to holiness in their married life and in the rearing and education of their children. By reason of their state and rank in life they have their own special gift among the people of God.40 Parents are ‘‘by their word and example, the first preachers of the faith for their children,’’41 and ‘‘the Christian family proclaims aloud both the virtues of the kingdom of God here and now and the hope of blessed life hereafter.’’42 So families appear to have some functions that relate to the church’s proclamation of Christ and its eschatological hope. However, for many Catholic theologians, the domestic church is the church for the people of this world, but it is also limited to this world. Familiaris consortio, for instance, is a document that wonderfully enriches our understanding of marriage and family, especially since it critiques the idea that marriage and family are necessary for the Christian to be a Christian; yet it also makes confusing the relationship between the church and the domestic church because of the way the pope construes marriage and family at various points. John Paul II suggests that marriage ‘‘belongs exclusively to this age. Marriage and procreation do not constitute, on the other hand, the eschatological future of man.’’43 For him, virginity constitutes the eschatological future of humankind, as a new state of life instituted by Christ.44 Is the church itself, though, limited to this world? Again from Lumen gentium, the church is not seen as wholly of this world. For example, the church


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that is visible on earth is noted as yearning for eschatological union with Christ.45 The church, as chapter 1 of the document proclaims, is a creature of Christ and Christ’s bride, a sacramental sign of God’s communion with us. It ‘‘coalesces from a divine and a human element,’’ in analogical relation to the incarnate Word.46 The church, then, bears a mysterious and paradoxical character in direct relation to the mystery of the Trinity. Theologically, it is questionable therefore to have a group (‘‘domestic church’’) that bears, somehow, a unique relationship to the church universal by the very fact of its name, as well as by its descriptions in relation to baptism, but which does not relate to that church throughout salvation history, including the post-resurrection era and the eschaton. In addition, the name ‘‘church’’ is cheapened if, in fact, marriages and families do not also bear eschatological weight. There is no need to name marriages and families as somehow ‘‘domestic church’’ if there is a limited relationship present. These merely become institutions that are part of the world, while baptized Christians that make up these institutions become the sole locus of the members making up Christ’s body.47 That is, all the baptized, and especially the laity, have the task of remedying ‘‘the customs and conditions of the world, if they are an inducement to sin, so that they all may be conformed to the norms of justice and may favor the practice of virtue rather than hinder it.’’48 Marriage and family merely become one of those secular institutions needing such remedies; they become a matter of natural law that has no need of the name ‘‘church.’’49 A further problem is the historical description of the ‘‘miniature church’’ that would, at Vatican II, become the phrase ‘‘domestic church.’’ John Chrysostom clearly saw the ecclesia minuscula as showing how the head of the household could order and thereby form his household in the virtue of justice. However, the ecclesiae minusculae were also where all people could be formed in theological virtues with decidedly eschatological reference; John Chrysostom says that those who are married with families might even ‘‘surpass’’ others in leading virtuous lives toward their end in God. It would seem, then, that in some sense, marriage and family can ‘‘constitute the eschatological future of man,’’ though the pope suggests not. A related problem is that it is not clear that we know what ‘‘Household of God’’ means, or even what the eschatological union between Christ and his church means, without family and household. On this point, marriage and family could remain, as the pope suggests, with a solely earthly function, in which case they could be analogically linked to the ‘‘Household of God.’’ The question remains, however, whether this analogical relationship provides a sufficient theological description for the relationship between church, marriage, and family, to say nothing of whether it is faithful

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to the tradition that Paul, Augustine, John Chrysostom, and the Vatican II fathers have put forth. What should be apparent in this discussion about the present use of ‘‘domestic church’’ is that the central question is one of grammar and of how the words are being used. It is by putting forth a different view about households as domestic church that I think we shall have a more theologically sound view of church in relation to marriage and family, and this is what I propose to do in this book, as will be discussed later.

Nuptial Meaning of the Body Relating somewhat to ‘‘domestic church’’ but with different theological emphases, the Theology of the Body and its particular idea of a nuptial meaning of the body provides another focus on marriage and family in Roman Catholic circles, but extending to Protestant circles as well. This theology has its roots, in part, in John Paul II’s writing, particularly his work on personalism, his apostolic exhortation Familiaris consortio, and his Wednesday addresses to papal audiences between 1979 and 1984. Other authors, notably Angelo Cardinal Scola (and, popularly, Christopher West) have taken up the pope’s concerns, and Theology of the Body has become more widely disseminated than ‘‘domestic church.’’ Theology of the Body rightly begins with creation and the question: what does it mean to be a human body made in the image of God? As creatures with bodies and made in the image of God, we are unique. Angels do not have bodies, but animals do not bear the image of God. Humans alone are embodied persons who live as the image of God. John Paul II likens human personhood to the persons of the Trinity, naming personhood as one key way in which God creates us in the imago dei. As persons, we desire to communicate with each other similar to the way that the triune persons communicate themselves to each other. The pope’s Trinitarian theology suggests that this divine communication is a communication of overflowing love that connotes ‘‘total selfgiving.’’ Because humans are embodied, the communication of love happens via bodily communication, so because we are created in the image of God, our ultimate embodied expressions of love are ones in which persons give themselves to each other totally. As the pope proclaims: ‘‘The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the invisible mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus be a sign of it.’’50 Marriage in this life is a sacrament. The original sacramentality of marriage at creation is restored to us through redemption in Jesus Christ.


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John Paul II writes again and again in his addresses of marriage as the ‘‘primordial sacrament’’ whose significance is restored to us because of Jesus Christ. Marriage is therefore a sign of God’s gracious acts in Jesus Christ, and all humans, married or not, have the ‘‘ethos’’ of that sacramental character of marriage.51 Marriage’s sacramental character does not, however, ‘‘pertain to the eschatological reality of the future world.’’52 This is because Christ’s own words appear to reject marriage as part of the future reality: ‘‘When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage.’’53 While some biblical scholars might question this exact interpretation of the text (see note), in nuptial theology marriage is quite clearly linked solely to the present world, and celibacy is most clearly seen as a connection to the future world. Here we must raise the question of what a sacrament is, though, and wonder how calling marriage a ‘‘primordial sacrament’’ is continuous with ‘‘sacrament’’ more generally. The answer to the question of what a sacrament is, however, is much discussed among theologians. Traditionally, the answer has been something along the lines of ‘‘a means of God’s grace,’’ but contemporary sacramental theology has moved toward emphasizing the sacraments as part of the life of the church and as having Christological focus. Indeed, Lumen gentium proclaims the church as sacrament in its second section, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church suggests that ‘‘sacraments are ‘powers that come forth’ from the Body of Christ, which is ever-living and lifegiving,’’54 and furthermore, that ‘‘[in] the sacraments of Christ the Church already receives the guarantee of her inheritance and even now shares in the everlasting life, while ‘awaiting our blessed hope. . . . ’ ’’55 Sacramental theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet points out the eschatological character of sacraments particularly in discussions of anamnesis as ‘‘memory of the future.’’ Anamnesis may be translated as memory, but the Christian’s eschatological reality reminds us that anamnesis is not simply memory of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Chauvet claims, ‘‘Eschatology says that one cannot confess Jesus as risen without simultaneously confessing him as resurrecting the world.’’56 Thus, the mystery of the faith recited in Catholic as well as many Protestant Eucharistic liturgies proclaims in one sentence the mystery of Christ’s death, resurrection, and second coming so that our memory reflects future reality as well. Reflection on the general nature of sacrament calls into question how and in what manner marriage can properly be called a sacrament. John Paul II calls marriage a ‘‘primordial sacrament’’ based on creation, but the question remains, then, whether ‘‘sacrament’’ is then an appropriate term to use—or whether, as I argue in this book, marriage, together with singleness, does, in fact, have eschatological significance.

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An additional question, related to eschatology, is the degree to which marriage and celibacy are seen as similar and engaged in the same mystery of relationship with God, and yet are also seen as distantly separate. In broad strokes, nuptial theology sees marriage and celibacy on a continuum: at the one end is marriage, a natural good in which we know and understand the creator and can experience the redemption of Christ. At the other end is the eschatological vision of humanity in which celibacy demonstrates our true communion with God. Celibacy is seen as a direct, though earthly, participation in the heavenly kingdom. In these scholars’ works, redemption appears to restore humanity to that ‘‘primordial sacrament of marriage’’ in this life, but that restoration does not have eschatological weight. However, these events in salvation history might change the ways we view marriage, celibacy, and a more general understanding of singleness. How might we make a theology intelligible which suggests that celibates experience eschatological communion here on earth, that married people experience a sign of that communion, but also that all of us, as humans, sin, fall short of the glory of God, and need the Christian community, in part, to help us grow closer in union with God? Another issue is nuptial theology’s stress on bodily complementarity. Nuptial theology rightly claims that we were created by God as male and female bodies, not as generic bodies. The point of being created as male and female bodies leads to the understanding that bodily sexual expression in particular is a sign of the total self-gift of love. Men’s and women’s bodies, given to each other in marriage, participate in the nuptial meaning of the body as they become one flesh, and generate more love together. A married couple thus participates in God’s own life by marrying and having sex, because their relationship with each other is a physical sign of triune grace in creation. The totality of this gift becomes problematic on human terms, since it presents a rather impossible ideal. As Lisa Cahill precisely points out, ‘‘The idea that each act is a total self-gift depends upon a very romanticized depiction of sex, and even of marital love.’’57 In addition, nuptial theology uses the understanding of male/female bodily complementarity to claim particular vocations for women: the vocation for marriage and physical motherhood, or the vocation for virginity and spiritual motherhood. Angelo Cardinal Schola claims, following John Paul II, that there are three dimensions, ‘‘constitutive ‘givens,’ ’’ that are ‘‘fundamental in women: nuptiality, motherhood, and the ‘prophetic genius.’ ’’58 Scola further suggests that men and women only know their true identities in their unity and nuptial nature, so that these two vocations are realized as true because of nuptial unity. A married woman recognizes herself ontologically as a mother


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because she is in relationship with her husband; a virgin recognizes herself ontologically as a mother because of her relationship with Christ the Bridegroom. Scola is careful throughout to delineate between ontology and roles. Ontological difference does not necessarily lead to particular roles, and this idea is similar to the distinction made between sex and gender. Scola’s discussion of woman’s dimensions of nuptiality and motherhood make his claim about ontology versus roles problematic, however. It is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of motherhood or nuptiality as somehow ontologically intrinsic to all women solely on the basis of creation, especially when we start thinking beyond the two narrow categories of marriage and virginity that Scola defines. What about unmarried, nonvowed women, for example? How is it that men do not also have the ontological character of nuptiality, if indeed the vision of humanity is of a unity in the duality of being male and female? We shall have to press beyond nuptiality and motherhood if we wish to speak of ontology distinct from roles.

Dichtomizing Households The arguments that these theologians make raise similar kinds of questions about why marriage and family are in trouble and what, precisely, we can do to fix them. For example, gender comes forth as a primary issue here; the relationship between the church, the state, and the family is another issue. In addition to these, there is a dis-ease concerning families: they are not all neatly packaged into mother, father, and children. Many of the authors identified here mention the variations: divorce, adoption, foster children, caring for older adults, and the like. Thus, even as there is a discussion of well-functioning, ideal marriages and families (typically construed or assumed as the nuclear family) as something to be greatly desired, most authors also recognize that ‘‘marriage and family’’ is no straightforward concept. Each of these issues (gender, state-family relationships, and the nature of ‘‘the family’’) generates significant theological problems, especially for ecclesiology. Here, I name these issues as dichotomies because I see them as causing divisions between groups of people and between people and the church. Socially, I think these distinctions hinder Christian discipleship, especially between groups that are dichotomized. Ecclesiologically, these dichotomies falsely separate people who are united in Christ. I have hinted at some of these ecclesiological problems in the earlier section; in this section I discuss these issues in greater depth.

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Male-Female Dichotomies In the PBS documentary Marriage: Just a Piece of Paper? Cokie Roberts proclaims that the feminist revolution of the 1960s was one primary cause for sweeping changes in family life in the late twentieth century.59 Feminism named equality as one of women’s primary concerns and asked whether family life as it stood could even sustain notions of family. The family ideal of the 1950s could not sustain the 1960s ideals of equality in the workplace and government. Women growing up in the 1950s and 1960s speak of being encouraged to try one of three professions: nursing, teaching, or secretarial work—until they were married, that is. After marriage, being a homemaker was a woman’s accepted social role, which had everything to do with her sex and gender. Second-wave feminists rightly saw this male/female dichotomy as preventing women from achieving their full potential. For example, Shulamith Firestone insisted that the family is the site of evil patriarchy where women have been unhelpfully held back from being freethinking individuals.60 Her temporary solution was to house adult women in group homes that looked radically different from the ‘‘traditional family,’’ where men claimed the economic and public work and roles, and women stayed home, raised children, and claimed the private, domestic roles. Thus women would live in homes with several other adults until they had the necessary skills to live as autonomous, free individuals, just like men.61 She envisioned an eventual society where women would be autonomous individuals, similar to how she saw men as autonomous individuals. The relationship between feminist theory and theology continues. Current third-wave feminists have, as mentioned earlier in the discussion about gender and the Marriage, Culture, and Family Project, left behind questions about marriage and family in relation to gender.62 One trajectory of note is that thirdwave feminism is rather more concerned to deconstruct essentialist notions. Now the question is whether there is, in fact, such a thing as ‘‘woman,’’ ‘‘man,’’ or ‘‘gender.’’ The field of feminist scholarship has become much narrower, and much less connected to traditionally construed ‘‘women’s’’ forms of life and conversations, including and most especially in relation to such things as marrying, raising children, dealing with financial issues, and other such things that the second wave of feminism dealt with squarely. For example, one will frequently find Michel Foucault mentioned in gender theory literature because his appeal to the use of power in constructions of bodies has been seductive.63 Gender becomes problematic precisely because it is seen to be a site of power play. Theologians have responded to this backlash against families and gender concerns in two main ways. One is to proclaim that gender roles were ordained


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by God and necessary for the right ordering of society, never mind what ‘‘the feminists’’ have said. Feminism would only take humanity down a dark and treacherous road away from God and God’s commands because women were not in their rightful places at home. Andreas Kostenberger, professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, starkly argues: One of the many ways in which feminism has contributed to the demise of the traditional family is by reassigning and/or obliterating gender role distinctions. . . . Feminism has also contributed to the demise of the traditional family by deconstructing the definition of family. The feminist movement has railed against the traditional definition of family as ‘‘the nuclear family of a heterosexual married couple with its natural and adopted children, together with family branches consisting of all nuclear families descended from common ancestors.’’64 For Kostenberger, Christian views of family stem almost solely from the Genesis account of the fall, which he sees repeated in the Ephesians text about wives being submissive to their husbands. Because ‘‘God’s word is not dependent on man’s approval,’’ women need to be properly submissive to their husbands and accept that their roles in life are not to be in economic, governmental, or other public spheres. Against Kostenberger’s view, the second response to the male/female dichotomy has been to say that gender roles are artificial and do not (or should not, in any case) bear much weight in terms of how marriage and family function, even to the point of seeing that there are no true sex or gender differences. As we have seen, Don Browning supports this idea in his quest for the ‘‘stable, equal-regard family.’’ His conception is that the best, most welladjusted families in this era are those that share household duties and mix up traditional gendered roles. On this view, equality is deemed most Christlike, because we are all regarded equal in Christ. Browning’s presuppositions of gender role equality are supported by numerous biblical scholars and other theologians who argue that God’s way is the way of equality. Paul’s statement ‘‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female’’ (Galatians 3:28) is often cited as evidence for alternative forms of male/female relationships, which embrace aspects of both genders. Rosemary Radford Ruether presses this point when she writes, ‘‘Women want to tear down the walls that separate the self and society into ‘male’ and ‘female’ spheres. This demands not just a new integrated self but a new integrated social order.’’65 Ruether rightly names the separation of male and female as a problem and proposes a solution by seeing that, ultimately, gender is inter-

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mixed. Her integrated social order is itself communitarian, being either a group that seeks ‘‘to put together all aspects of this feminist, socialist, communitarian, and ecological vision in a small experiment conducted on a separate social and economic base from the larger society’’ or a group that works on particular aspects of this vision bit by bit in larger society.66 Despite their obvious theological differences, both Kostenberger and Ruether see themselves as providing countercultural accounts of families and gender roles. Both envision a new, rightly ordered society of men and women that more clearly reflects God’s own life. But both also overplay the role of feminism, or its lack, in the rightly ordered family, and thus both overplay a male/female dichotomy. That is, feminist concerns about gender roles become an overriding principle that circumscribes everything else. Kostenberger automatically problematizes feminism and prescribes certain gendered roles; Ruether attempts to solve the dichotomy by seeing not only that there are no gendered roles but that there ultimately will be no gender distinction. The correctness (or not) of feminist aims has already been determined before either author begins further theological discussion, a point that limits their theology and especially their ecclesiology. Kostenberger’s discussion of marriage and family focuses almost solely on husband-wife relationships, and not much at all on Christians’ relationships with each other in Christ and whether ‘‘family’’ changes as a result. Where he mentions church, it is apt to be in the context of men’s responsibilities to their local churches, and the qualifications one needs in order to be a church leader.67 Ruether eschews most discussions of ecclesiology, though she suggests that the church, in the context of Mary, becomes a symbol of liberation for women. Ruether’s focus here is on church as symbolic, and not as relationships in Christ.68 A further danger is that in circumscribing theology with gender, gender roles and difference become too simplistic, but scriptures do not present so straightforward an account of gender and family. Kostenberger mentions the Genesis creation stories and the Ephesians text, but Ruether mentions Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Other scriptures beyond these make the Christian story more complex regarding gender: Paul mentions Priscilla as an important disciple and coworker with her husband, but Paul’s household codes dictate female subordination.69 Even where the household codes suggest subordination, though, they do not necessarily suggest specific gender roles. Moreover, the household code in Ephesians 5 compares the household to Christ’s own love, a point that should make the reader consider the ways in which Christ’s love is about sacrifice and a certain kind of submission to God’s own will. The Body of Christ itself makes the question of gender more complex. Ephesians 5 suggests that the man is the head of his wife as Christ is the head


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of the church, which makes the woman and the church the body in this analogy. David Matzko McCarthy considers that this passage makes gender roles quite complex, for no specific roles are prescribed for either the head or the body; it is more an existential point.70 But it is difficult to read this passage without automatically thinking of Romans 12 and the fact that there, Christ’s body has many members, all of which belong to each other. Then, too, there is the Body of Christ mentioned in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In chapter 10, the Body is the Eucharistic body of the church that shares in the bread of Christ; in chapter 12, Paul proclaims that each Christian makes up part of the Body of Christ. In the rest of this book, particularly in chapter 2, I explore this potential relationship between gender and ecclesiology and the play between male, female, and being the Body of Christ. The dichotomy may not be overcome, but it will certainly be complicated, in hopefully fruitful and faithful ways.

Married versus Single Dichotomies In some ways, a married/single separation has been present in Christian theology since its very early days, with good reason. The scriptures are by no means consistent when it comes to understanding marriage and singleness. Jesus proclaims that there will be no marriage in heaven and that his true mother, brothers, and sisters are those who obey his Father’s commandments. At the same time, he attended weddings and cautions against divorce. The apostle Paul wrote that it was better to marry than to burn, but it was far better to live in his own state (presumably as a single, celibate man). In later centuries, monasticism was frequently touted as the most holy way of life. Thus Martin Luther complained about the church’s emphasis on monasticism. The Catholic Church favored this view until Vatican II. Florence Caffrey Bourg provides an excellent example of this dichotomy at work, of a pre–Vatican II handout on vocation. She describes ‘‘three pairs of pictures, meant to contrast secular life with religious life based on the evangelical counsels. . . . The pictures on the right show priests and vowed religious sisters and brothers; those on the left show the secular life. For the pair of pictures depicting chastity, a sister dressed in a habit kneels before a glowing crucifix and says, ‘I choose Christ as my spouse.’ The accompanying picture on the left shows a couple at their wedding: ‘I want to marry the person of my choice.’ ’’71 Theological concerns have gone almost entirely the opposite direction in the contemporary era. A poignant question for theologians should be, What about single people? especially since marriage and families are not, in fact, a necessity for Christians, as in Matthew 23:30, where Jesus proclaims that there

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will be no marriages in heaven. Speaking of ‘‘singleness,’’ rather than the celibate vowed life, there are certain biases against singles including that they seem to be more sexual, more free, and less concerned with upholding the fabric of society; we live in a culture that is prone to confusing and mixing celibacy and singleness.72 Furthermore, the emphasis on creating good marriages and families so that we, collectively, may attain the salvation of a good society has unfortunately converged in recent years with the clergy sexual abuse scandals. The blame for the clergy abuse scandals has been commonly linked to celibacy, and the result is a high level of suspicion toward those who take vows of celibacy and who also appear to exist as single people alongside extreme favoritism toward marriage. The church has a stake not only in understanding celibacy without fear but also in juxtaposing marriage and celibacy, if for no other reason than that it is part of the scriptural tradition, as in 1 Corinthians 7. If we hold the scriptures and the creeds to be true, then we must struggle with what Paul says and also what it means that Christ is ‘‘born of the Virgin Mary.’’ To fail to do so is to deny Christian faith. Stephen Post notes this fact when he writes: If Christianity is taken seriously, there should be no regret in not being married; the believer is already a full person without marriage and children. . . . It is disturbing that popular Christian bookstores which devote significant space to marriage and family don’t devote shelf space to the gift of singleness; this absence suggests a two-tiered system in which marriage and family rank higher.73 Post compares this to past centuries where the church, following Paul, undoubtedly put forth a life of virginity as the better or more exalted ranking. Nonetheless, Post develops this position in only three pages in his book; the rest of his book is centered on marriage and family, with a very few mentions of the word ‘‘single’’ scattered about. A handful of others have written recently about singleness. Most are Evangelical Christian theologians who come from Protestant traditions that heavily focus on marriage and families. Thus, their aim is to critique Evangelical Protestant overemphasis on families while not quite taking the line that many previous generations of Catholic scholars have taken regarding virginity as better. Albert Hsu is one who says definitively: ‘‘ ‘Family theology’ is not Biblical theology.’ A truly Christian view of both singleness and marriage will honor both equally without disparaging one or the other.’’74 In this book, I will deal with several ‘‘single states of life,’’ keeping in mind that canonically (for the Roman Catholic Church), the one truly accepted single state of life is that of the evangelical counsel: the vowed state of celibacy. As will become more clear


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in chapter 4, I will speak of single states of life in spite of the fact that it is not yet a ‘‘theological’’ category. That is, singleness as currently understood appears as a broad sociological term, and it is not yet clear that it can do theological work. I shall suggest, however, that Augustine’s view of many single states of life does have some theological content that could be explored in more depth in future work. A problem with both domestic church and nuptial theology relates to eschatology, in the converse. There is a way in which both strands of theology follow Don Browning’s moves and make the good family into a sort of heaven on earth. The domestic church movement does this by seeing families as centers of social justice; Theology of the Body tends toward this by putting forth a very ideal vision of marriage. Theologian David Matzko McCarthy attempts to mitigate this idealization with a view toward understanding that marriage and family are not the singular, foundational entities that we often take them to be: ‘‘I propose that marriage does not set a couple apart in order to begin a family, but puts a husband and wife in the middle of a larger network of preferential loves.’’75 A married couple is not married in isolation, nor should the husband and wife relationship be seen in too idealistic a manner. Married couples relate to other family members, friends, and neighbors in a wide network of relationships so that their relationship as couple is thus not simply about each other, but about all the people they encounter. McCarthy shows that cultural and theological assumptions about marriage relate strongly to the market economy, especially to the idea that familial interactions be done on a basis of detachment from others, with only temporary engagement that serves ‘‘pre-social needs.’’76 On McCarthy’s view, the dominant cultural views as well as several theological views thus support a false conception of the household as an autonomous, self-supporting entity, serving not Christ and the church but powers and principalities in this world. The result is, once again, to divide further the states of singleness and marriage. My consideration in this book of single states of life in turn suggests ways to reflect on households. To some extent, I am expanding on Wendy Wright’s work in Sacred Dwelling. There she gives examples of how ordinary households can be places for spiritual development, just as monastic communities are assumed to be places for spiritual development. She considers the traditional monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the environment of family, noting that monks take special vows, but members of families do not. Still, families desiring deeper spiritual formation might consider the ways in which poverty, chastity, and obedience inform their ways of living. Wright’s impulse here is exactly right: the spiritual formation of monastic houses is not something that should be relegated to those who take special vows (though

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vowed religious do live out that spiritual formation in particular ways). Married and celibate are not the disparate groups that seem to be assumed in various ethical circles; what I aim to do in this book is take that discussion even further by making the marriage and monasticism conversation more complex. The Christian life is not an either/or prospect. Cultivating the virtues and living a good Christian life, no matter what state we are in, is something that all Christians are called to do, and this will remain a key theme throughout this book, especially in chapters 4 and 7. I suggest that despite our tendencies to separate discussions of marriage and singleness/virginity and despite the fact that there are some very important distinctions in the ways these are lived out (especially with respect to the difference between the vowed state of marriage and the vowed state of celibacy), the two are most beneficially discussed together. There are several reasons for this. One reason is that things domestic are not solely relegated to ‘‘family’’ in the traditional sense. The broader considerations of what it means to be domestic and to be part of a household (be it a familial household or a monastic household, to say nothing of the Household of God) call us to consider singleness, or at least its vowed aspect, celibacy, alongside marriage.77 None of us can escape from at least some activities that are routine and domestic. At the least, there is always washing of bodies and clothes, and cooking and eating of food to be done (even when those things are done for one, by another person). Single people, even the most holy and ascetic virgins, cannot escape from these quotidian activities (or at least the consideration of these activities, as would be the case in a so-called holy anorexic like Catherine of Siena).

Public/Private Dichotomies Many contemporary scholars have commented on the ‘‘liberal project’’ stemming from the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Several Enlightenment philosophers, notably Immanuel Kant, developed theories about ethics that suggested a universal ethical system that could be attained by using one’s reason. The assumption was that all humans, once having truly reasoned their way to rational conclusions, could agree on a certain set of universal principles by which to live in peace and harmony with other humans. This was a reaction, in part, against the so-called religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The idea that there could be a universal, logically reasoned public understanding of ethics that could apply no matter what one’s religious beliefs were is partly responsible for a modern shift in understanding relationships between what is public and what is private.78


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Alasdair MacIntyre’s assertion in After Virtue is that humans lost their sense of telos in the Enlightenment and, with it, lost a sense of what it means to be orienting one’s life, and developing virtues, in progress toward that end. Telos, after all, is a very particular goal relating to a particular way of life. Christians view their end (blessedness in God) in entirely different light than, say, the eighteenth-century deists. For Kant and similar thinkers, such a view would be problematic, since it would only serve to reinforce the key problems they saw in a world that warred about religion. Marriage and family, and the church, were part of the private sphere, where one’s ethical way of life might be different than that of public political and economic spheres. The family was responsible for developing good public citizens, but because it could also be the site for cultivating religious and other nonrational ‘‘values,’’ it was not reliable as a source of the universal public good. The influence of the Enlightenment view affects the ways people talk, dress, and love, along with a whole host of other ‘‘domestic’’ activities, which are now often seen as apolitical and noneconomical. While ‘‘public’’ and ‘‘private’’ have been questioned by some, namely third-wave feminists,79 the distinctions remain part of Western conceptions of life.80 As we saw in the section on male/female dichotomies, certain, mostly domestic, activities are seen by even some prominent feminist scholars as having no import perhaps because what is held to be ‘‘personal’’ is held not to be public and political. Part of the reason for this is due to a valid concern on the part of feminist theorists, which is to demonstrate that women and their work need not be relegated solely to ‘‘domestic’’ activities. Women, too, can have voices in what is often regarded as the male, public domain. The question, though, is whether domestic activities are political. Are households, in actuality, political, and have we been deceiving ourselves into thinking that they can be pushed into some mythical private sphere, swept under the rug? Our experience in the contemporary world, actually, is that in fact those things we consider ‘‘private’’ are very influential in our public spaces. Despite the fact that homemaking, sex, and religion have often been deemed ‘‘private,’’ we still consider these issues in elections for ‘‘public’’ officials. President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and Senator Lieberman’s identity as an Orthodox Jew are both matters of concern when it comes to the polls. Thus, there comes a point where such a distinction makes little sense. Some postmodernist theorists would claim that they have made exactly this point: that it makes more sense to speak of ‘‘publics’’ rather than a notion of a single public. But even when writing about publics, or subpublics, the separations between publics become clear in their relationships to one another, or lack thereof. For example, Bernd Wannenwetsch suggests from his European context that ‘‘the relational nature of the Church’s public is usually

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seen mainly in the context of its relationship to the Sate, where it is viewed as the State’s opposite number.’’81 The public/private dichotomy thus closely mirrors thinking about the relationship between religion and politics, a relationship that is often construed as the difference between public and private. Religion, like the household work that is often relegated to women, becomes privatized, inserted into a sphere that people do not want to see and which people want to imagine has no import politically or economically. ‘‘I have my beliefs and you have yours,’’ but those beliefs should not impinge on our mutual ability to participate in civil society. Moreover, there is the sense in American society that politicians who espouse religion are guilty of overstepping the public/private bounds by legislating (about gay marriages, for example) that which should be nearly completely separated from the ‘‘private’’ sphere. ‘‘The state should not encroach on my home life,’’ we say. The paradox there is that civil politics recognizes the need for well-formed families in order to perpetuate its own good. Parents are supposed to cultivate a patriotic sense in their children, familiarity with American foundational stories, and the virtues necessary for being a good citizen. Similarly, families recognize the need for state intervention and support via Medicare, child assistance programs, funding for schools, and the like. In this state of affairs, theologians like Don Browning have rightly been concerned that dialogue about ‘‘fixing’’ the family has centered very much on conversation between the state and the home, with very little input from religions, especially Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This kind of discussion emphasizes the non-presence of religion in conversation and perpetuates the initial problem I raised: that the relationship between the church and the household has been overlooked. This is a serious omission for ecclesiology. In chapters 5 and 6 in particular, I will make the claim that the church, both as Household of God and as constituted by ‘‘citizens’’ of the City of God, cannot be rightly understood as a separate institution from either ‘‘public politics’’ or ‘‘private domesticity.’’

Conclusions It is not at all clear that we can ‘‘overcome’’ any of the dichotomies mentioned in this chapter, at least in the sense of doing away with distinctions. We do make theological distinctions between marriage and singleness, between male and female, and between public and private, which can enable clarity of thought.82 Making distinctions, however, is different from seeing these as necessarily separate, which is the sense in which dichotomies usually appear.


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Theologians need not make such assumptions, however. I argue in this book that God’s action in the world, especially in Christ and the church, makes dichotomies in this second sense superfluous. Christianity offers a more sane view, which is to see that one’s state of life is not the ultimate question, even though it is important. The focus of this book is, instead, the question of how households are related to the church, as Household of God. I claim that the church must be determinative for rightly understanding Christian households; this is a reciprocal relationship, though, for Christian households themselves are important for rightly understanding the church and its nature. These dichotomies are theologically problematic because they do not allow us to see households in the context of the Household of God, and as unified together in that Household of God. As Christians, we are members of the Body of Christ, and we are unified by our baptism into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. This is the point that Bernd Wannenwetsch claims when he writes about Christian worship as political and as the ‘‘beginning’’ of Christian ethics. He suggests that the church’s worship disrupts all these dichotomies. The church manifests as a new kind of institution: it is both household and city, and it is thus political in a new way.83 Wannenwetsch remarks on Paul’s statements to the Ephesians: ‘‘You are therefore no longer strangers without citizens’ rights; you are fellow citizens with the saints, and members of the household of God.’’84 The aim of the rest of this book will be to show how God has re-created households in relation to the Household of God, such that dichotomies like those mentioned here become unintelligible. That there is a relationship between household and church should not be at question, at least not if we take scripture and history seriously; in Paul’s first letter to Timothy, there is clear mention made of the connections as well as the distinctions between an individual household and God’s household.85 In the letter to Titus, Paul suggests a connection between the maintenance and ordering of households in the context of those who proclaim doctrine that is contrary to the gospel. He writes, ‘‘There are many rebellious people, idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision; they must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for sordid gain what it is not right to teach.’’86 Paul sees that the faithful teaching of the gospel of Christ and the good functioning of the gathered church and Christian households are interconnected in some way. Paul mentions that the church is, somehow, a household of God in his letter to the Ephesians: ‘‘So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.’’87 There are also the ‘‘household codes’’ about the proper ways to order home structures listed in the scriptures,88 and the admonition that a bishop of the church must be one who has a rightly

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ordered family.89 To these we might add all of Jesus’ statements about marriage, divorce, and children, along with the Old Testament witness about various households.90 Early Christians often worshiped in household churches, where the connection between Christian worship and Christian household living might have been more explicit.91 Even with this scriptural evidence about connections between the church and households, there remains a question about what, precisely, the household is and how, exactly, that relates to the church. As we have seen earlier, books written today very often tend to be about marriage and family in some form, with only a few delving into the complications and nuances of households. Does the familial form of household, particularly the nuclear family, adequately describe the Christian life? For as Florence Caffrey Bourg suggests in her book about domestic churches, ‘‘The nuclear family image—married father and mother running an autonomous household, with children still living at home—is clearly the dominant model.’’92 Most scholars writing about marriage and family today acknowledge that the reality of families is no longer (if it ever was) the traditional nuclear construction, but those scholars do not usually consider households of singles, widows, monasteries, and the like.93 Thus, part of the discussion in this book will be to consider Christian states of life as they relate to households. Historically, and especially in Roman Catholic theology, books about households also relate to traditional ‘‘states of life’’ and the evangelical counsels (that is, marriage and vowed celibacy as the two states of life from which Catholics must choose). These books often take a stand toward one state of life or another, and it is that state of life that determines the kind of household in which one lives out that vocation. This book questions that default positioning of marriage and family, as well as any lingering glorification of the ‘‘nuclear family’’ and distortion of states of life. A theology of households provides a necessarily broader context for considering marriage, family, widowhood, monasticism, divorce, and the like. Thomas Breidenthal, a pastor and theologian, has suggested: ‘‘Broadly speaking, a household is two or more people sharing the daily round of life to a significant degree and over a significant period of time, whether the sharing is freely chosen or not.’’94 Breidenthal offers that the overall implication is that in Christian households, people learn the intricacies of what it means to love neighbors and live with each other in community via the ‘‘nearness’’ of household living. Thus a household may be parents and children in all the variety of what that means in contemporary society (divorced, single, or remarried parents with all the children from past and present relationships), but it also means monasteries, and intentional communities like Catholic Worker. A book on households and their relationships to the church ought at least


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consider the many varieties of households that that same church has acknowledged over the centuries. In this book, I therefore show how states of life (traditionally marriage and virginity and celibacy) and their resultant households are related to ecclesiology, or the theological understanding of the church. The title of this book gives away the answer, in part. ‘‘Water is thicker than blood’’ refers to the point that, for Christians, baptism and the relationships we have with other Christians are more potent than our blood ties and familial relationships. Familial relationships are important, but not to the detriment of participation in the church. Christians cannot rightly see or describe the church without reference to the quotidian households of which we are a part, and vice versa. In the next chapter, I propose a way to begin describing this church/household relationship.


2 Seeing the World with Augustine Word, Story, and Worship

How are the quotidian, ordinary households in which we live interrelated with the Household of God, the church? As suggested in chapter 1, the answer to this question lies deeper than relating theological views to contemporary cultural concerns about marriage, family, or life as a single person. The answer to this question must come from considering the church’s own life, and what the church has to offer to daily households. To make this move, however, requires envisioning the world in a different way than much of the contemporary scene allows. To say that the church is determinative is also to make claims about Christ, scripture, and liturgy as determinative, because Christ is the head of the church, because the scriptural canon and uses of scripture in theology depend on ecclesial community, and because liturgy (in the sense of its being ‘‘work of the people’’) is the unique form of praise that Christians offer to the triune God. Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells have said that ‘‘God gives his people everything they need to follow him.’’1 In the church, Christians are drawn into a particular way of life that offers a different story than other ways of life that we might encounter in contemporary culture. For example, ‘‘religious studies’’ offers a different worldview in which the Bible and Christianity are seen as objects in what is often a social-scientific description of the way things are. On this social-scientific account, patterns in group behavior, surveys, population counts, and graphs serve as the lens through which to view the world, while Christian narratives of the

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world view the world through the lens of Scripture and the like. Some of the dichotomies mentioned in chapter 1 operate from a more social-scientific worldview or by trying to view Christian households with a social-scientific focus as well as a scriptural focus. It is nearly impossible to think about contemporary households without defaulting to this social-scientific lens: if someone mentions divorce in America, we are likely to think of the often-cited statistic that one in two marriages will end in divorce,2 as much as or more than we think of Jesus’ proscriptions of divorce, for example. When marriage or singleness is touted in papers as being advantageous, the reasons come in the form of statistics: married people live longer, or conversely, singles can be happier.3 The question theologians ought to ask is the extent to which such information is ultimately helpful, or indeed, significantly changes the way Christians think about the world. Answering the central questions of this book requires looking in different directions, to times and places when theological questions more definitively show themselves. This is not to say that other theologians at other times constructed perfect theologies of households that we can or should somehow recover for use today, but rather to intimate that investigating theologians who were not dealing with modernity’s assumptions gives us a refreshing perspective. Augustine of Hippo is one such theologian who draws us toward thinking about the church’s life, partly because he himself was a bishop concerned about the church, and partly because of the encompassing way in which he thinks about Christians and the church. George Lindbeck has said, ‘‘A scriptural world is thus able to absorb the universe. It supplies the interpretive framework within which believers seek to live their lives and understand reality.’’4 Augustine is one of those for whom scripture absorbs the world, seen most especially in his work The City of God. Christianity offers a whole new worldview that bears marks of the City of God, humanity’s final destination. The faithful are drawn into God’s own life by God’s gracious action bestowed via salvation history, the church, and theological virtue. By contrast, the earthly city harbors people never quite able to know that they have disordered desires that yet relate to the one true desire for God, but which cannot actually bring them to rest in God. The City of God displays this absorption most readily (discussed later in chapters 4 and 5), but it comes across in his other works as well. Augustine is not the only one who can offer this encompassing worldview, but he is one of the most well known. Augustine proves to be a good conversation partner in the context of this book as well because he writes often, and most notoriously, about various states of life in the context of the church. Marriage, virginity, monasticism, and holy widowhood are some of the several states that he considers, and while

seeing the world with augustine

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states of life are not households, they do relate to the creation and ordering of households. That is to say, marriage and monasticism are lived in households, as communities of people who have made commitments to live with each other and support each other. Augustine also addresses how to live in those specific households in his homilies and other more pastoral texts, in addition to all that he writes about specific states of life. The rest of this chapter sets out some initial thoughts on the use of Augustine and suggests how Augustine’s absorption of the scriptural world is demonstrated in relation to households.

Augustine Reading Scripture: The Story of Mary and Martha One way to show how Augustine’s theological vision might help the contemporary conversation is to compare his reading of scriptures relating to households with those of some contemporary scholars. A Gospel account that often appears in conversations about households is the Lucan narrative of Mary and Martha: As they continued on their way, he entered a certain village, where a certain woman by the name of Martha welcomed him [into her house]. She had a sister called Mary who sat down at the feet of the Lord, listening to his words. But Martha was distracted with all the work. She came near, saying, ‘‘Lord, doesn’t it concern you that my sister does not assist me with all the work? Tell her to take her part with me.’’ The Lord spoke to her, replying, ‘‘Martha, Martha, you are concerned [and troubled] by many things but only one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken from her.’’ (Luke 10:38– 42)5 This vignette about Martha and Mary has both captivated and troubled theologians through the ages. On the one hand, it appears as an incident in Jesus’ daily life, one of perhaps many moments when he instructed his followers in how to live. Yet this is no easy task: what exactly is it that Jesus is proclaiming here? Jesus seems to make a statement against household work and the many distractions that come with it, in favor of sitting at his feet and listening to his words. Such a proclamation is difficult not simply because it is difficult to figure out how to choose not to do household work in favor of listening to Jesus in rapt attention but also because it seems to go against what Paul suggests in 2 Thessalonians, that people ought to ‘‘earn the bread they eat.’’6

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Because of this conundrum, the passage has also been treated figuratively, where Martha and Mary appear as types for Jerusalem and the church, justification by works or justification by faith, Judaism and Christianity, Catholicism and Protestantism. This text is also seen as demonstrating the key differences between states of life: Mary represents the contemplative virgin; Martha represents the active married woman.7 Mary has been seen as having the ‘‘better portion’’ because she is able to refrain from doing work in favor of listening to Jesus speak. She can eschew the worries and troubles of the current world and instead envision the future when Jesus will be all-in-all, and so she symbolizes the world to come. Martha, on the other hand, has been viewed as the unfortunate woman who must trouble herself almost solely with the things of this world; she is too much concerned with the things of this world to be happy, and so she symbolizes the present world.8 The passage appears to support a dichotomy between marriage and singleness. This text also points out gender roles and gender relations in the household. Plenty of women listening to sermons on the text complain about women’s roles, identifying more with ‘‘bad’’ Martha than with ‘‘good’’ Mary. In recent years feminist scholars have raised concerns about women’s roles and women’s issues in this story. Elizabeth Schu¨ssler-Fiorenza, for example, writes against the typological, ‘‘abstractionist’’ interpretations of the text in favor of suggesting that here, two women are pitted against each other, one who was clearly doing the work of the household and the other who was clearly being submissive (at the Lord’s feet) and silent. Schu¨ssler-Fiorenza takes this state of affairs even more to task by alluding to the fact that in Luke’s time, the house and the church were one and the same, since house churches were where people met. Therefore, the (male) apostles appeal to ‘‘a revelatory word of the resurrected One in order to restrict women’s ministry and authority. Its rhetorical interests are to silence women leaders of house churches who, like Martha, might have protested and, at the same time, to exto[l] the ‘silent.’ ’’9 Others, such as Jo Ann McNamara, see this story as providing an opportunity for women’s liberation from domestic duties, in favor of contemplation; thus silence is not seen as threatening.10 However, Stevan Davies, similarly to Schu¨ssler-Fiorenza, speaks decisively against any interpretation of the story that suggests women as liberated via contemplation at Jesus’ feet. He writes that if one comes to such a conclusion, ‘‘one must dismiss from serious consideration the fact that it is another woman who objects to Mary’s listening role; one must overlook the fact that listening to a man is far from an unusual or liberated role for women.’’11 The story of Mary and Martha thus deals in many of the questions I have already raised concerning households: gender roles, states of life, and views


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about daily work for Christians. It presents itself, at least in the writings of the biblical scholars here noted, as a story of antagonisms: two women, two states of life, two ways of being confront each other, but only one ‘‘wins’’ the prize, approval of the Lord. It appears to make my initial question about the church and the household to be a rather moot point, because Mary often symbolizes the church and receives high praise from Jesus. The reading often given to Martha’s household is that it seems to be a dull, busy place, affected too much by worldly cares, and thus inevitably split from the church.

An Augustinian Reading We come to a different possible view of the text via Augustine of Hippo. Augustine’s view of the Mary/Martha text adds another dimension to the interpretations presented here. Like others, he takes up the position that in this pericope Mary and Martha are types for the contemplative and apostolic lives. He writes: Therefore, just as what Martha did was good when she was busy attending to the saints, but what her sister Mary did, sitting at the Lord’s feet and listening to his words (Lk 10:39), was better, so too we praise the excellence of Susanna in her married chastity, but value more highly the excellence of the widow Anna, and even more that of the virgin Mary. Those who attended to the needs of Christ and his disciples, and did so out of their own resources, did something good, but those who gave up all their possessions, in order to follow that Lord without that encumbrance, did something better. With each of the two good ways of acting, both in the latter case and in the case of Martha and Mary, the one that is better is not possible without forgoing or abandoning the other.12 Yet, while Augustine does take a position that some of the feminist theorists would find highly troubling, he provides significant nuances that lend an overall broader interpretation of households. For example, Augustine’s reading of the text does not lead to an interpretation of two women pitted against each other.13 He very deliberately puts forth marriage as a good, alongside virginity, and he even sees, in this passage, a connection to other states of life such as holy widowhood. There is no protagonist/antagonist relationship in his description but a reflection on a few states of life and how they all lead toward the Good Life. Second, Martha, as a married woman, has an opportunity to serve Jesus just as much as Mary does. This is the key point, on Augustine’s reading. Mary is able to serve in a different

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and more lofty way: being freed from worldly concerns about relationships, virgins are more able to develop a relationship with Christ. They are able to do so not to the exclusion of married women’s relationships with Christ but to a different degree. Third, he finds that marriage is ontologically necessary to virginity, even though the latter state is better. That is, virginity could not exist unless marriage also exists. Marriage is like a small hill, which has a path one takes to seek God, but virginity is like a mountain that one climbs, a treacherous road, but more beneficial. The view from the mountain is much more breathtaking than the view from the hill; virginity is therefore the more lofty and rewarding calling.14 Augustine is making some subtle observations, and they may not be ones that contemporary scholars would like to see. However, these considerations about the Mary/Martha pericope suggest that, for Augustine, the scriptural relationship between the church and households may be more expansive than in some other readings of the text. Both Mary and Martha are serving the Lord and advancing toward the Good. Augustine’s vision of marriage and virginity and contemplation and action suggests a different view from one in which marriage and virginity are seen as separate because one is earthly and the other is heavenly.

Salvation History In addition to scripture, part of Augustine’s all-encompassing worldview resides in his powerful understanding of salvation history, as the story the church tells and in which it participates. Augustine was one who was quite simply unable to discuss marriage and singleness outside the context of salvation history.15 Moreover, because he discusses these states of life and their related households in the context of salvation history, he is unable to separate discussion of marriage and singleness from each other. This is true from his initial comments on marriage in The Excellence of Marriage even through his later writing on marriage and chastity in treatises such as Continence. Augustine gives us a ready account to see how households and domestic things had their place in this history. Whenever he describes marriage and virginity and other states of singleness, he does so with a view to the great story of salvation that has already captivated him, as we see in his Confessions. For example, following his recounting of his life of sin and his subsequent conversion by God’s grace, he spends book X of that work discussing memory and remembering God, and then books XI through XIII giving an account of salvation history. It is a story to which he returns again and again, and one that he cannot help but tell as he speaks about marriage, virginity, widowhood, and the like.


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Augustine’s answers to the fourth-century Jovinian-Jerome debate about the sanctity of marriage show something more of how he uses salvation history in his theology. The monk Jovinian advocated a very high view of baptism in relation to marriage and virginity. For Jovinian, married people and monastics had equal merit in the kingdom of heaven if they had preserved their baptism. Special ascetic acts, such as leading a life of celibacy or fasting from particular foods, did not merit particular rewards, and so Jovinian equated marriage and celibacy, or more particularly, virginity. The reaction to Jovinian’s suppositions was unequivocal: the bishop of Rome, Siricius, condemned Jovinian, as did Ambrose of Milan. But Jerome issued one of the most scathing reviews, calling Jovinian ‘‘the Epicurus of the Christians,’’ and accusing him of ‘‘rutting in his gardens among the young men and young women.’’16 As David Hunter suggests, Augustine did not directly enter into the fray between Jovinian and Jerome; nonetheless, his treatises on marriage and virginity written around 401 do indirectly refute the positions of both because he takes neither’s side but sees both marriage and virginity as part of the good Christian life. Augustine holds that virginity is a greater good, using as evidence the virginity of both Jesus and Mary, as well as the statements Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 7. For Augustine, however, the good itself is demonstrated in the extent to which people develop habits that align themselves to the will of God. Virtue, in relation to right relationship with God, is so important to Augustine that he maintains that the humble married woman is better than the prideful virgin.17 Thus, development of virtue is more significant than one’s specific state of life, and he comes to this view by seeing both the married woman and the virgin in salvation history. The salvation story is vastly important to one’s theological understanding of states of life, and it is this fact that a reading of Augustine helps pinpoint. Some theologians, following John Chrysostom, would go so far as to say that both marriage and family were instituted after the fall, and therefore have no place in our restoration to the original created order. In contemporary theology, marriage is often seen in the order of creation and the fall, and not so clearly in the order of redemption and eschatology. For example, John Paul II suggests that ‘‘marriage and procreation do not constitute, on the other hand, the eschatological future of man.’’18 Relationships, sexual and otherwise, between men and women are limited to this age and are merely a temporary solution until the time when Christ will come again.19 Protestant theologians have traditionally seen marriage as a natural good in relation to creation, with little or no supernatural aim or existence, following Luther’s emphasis on marriage as a natural good created by God but not instituted as a sacrament by Christ as a later dispensation. For theologians like

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Stephen Post, the idea of sacrament merely connotes holiness of a way of life in this world and points to a this-worldly ‘‘eschatological’’ vision in which love and justice increase more and more.20 Indeed, Post suggests that Catholic and Protestant understandings of marriage are not truly disparate and that both groups seek the same ends. He writes, ‘‘[While] the Protestant tradition rejected the notion of marriage as a sacrament, it nevertheless was fully consistent with the emerging medieval appreciation for the holiness of marriage and family.’’21 Jesus’ teachings on marriage show better ways to live out married and family life on this earth, but on this marriage is not always related to the death and resurrection of Christ, nor the hope that Christ will come again. Post’s vision, then, is one in which Christian traditions can come together in unity to put forth helpful visions of marriage to help solve the problems we see today. These views of marriage foster an understanding of Jesus as a teacher issuing significant sayings but does not truly respect Christological concerns and the ways those concerns bear on marriage. As mentioned in the first chapter, it separates marriage and singleness to too great a degree. Yet, as I will claim in the next two chapters, Augustine is almost always discussing creation and marriage in light of Christ, but he also speaks of singleness (in various configurations) with the same focus. Augustine sees marriage and singleness as intertwined with creation, fall, and the order of redemption. Thus, it is not with the rebirth and redemption in Christ that we must begin, nor with the fall, but with the events that happen before Adam and Eve are thrown out of the garden. Contemporary theologians considering Augustine have not tended to take note of his views of salvation history as a whole. The focus instead has been on sex and sexual pleasure in relation to creation in particular. This emphasis is due in part to the ways in which contemporary theologians have connected Augustine’s views of sex and sin to the contraception debate in Catholic circles and to patriarchal views of women’s roles in marriage.22 But this emphasis also stems from a view anachronistically borrowed from Martin Luther, that marriage is good because it is created by God but is a natural good. For example, H. S. Benjamins suggests that the early church fathers would have viewed Luther’s take on marriage with some suspicion, given Paul’s encouragement of the single way of life in 1 Corinthians 7. Benjamins’s argument makes the claim that with Augustine came a more positive approach to marriage based on the creation of man and woman, because he locates marriage and sex in the goods of creation and not in the fall.23 Benjamins is correct in his assessment of Augustine’s views on marriage, but he is incorrect, I suggest, in locating the reason for Augustine’s views of marriage solely on his view of creation.


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Paul Ramsey is one who does view marriage and virginity in light of the whole of salvation history, focusing especially on sexuality, the fall, and the eschaton, especially with respect to Augustine’s understanding of sexual desire and the permissibility of sexual pleasure. He sees that Augustine posits sex as the way by which sin entered the world because the actions of our sexual organs are disordered and incapable of control by reason. Indeed, marriage offers a way for good to come out of evil, because it is a postlapsarian dispensation that allows for chaste sex, as opposed to the Edenic state when humans were able to control all their organs, particularly sexual organs, in accordance with God’s plan (since Augustine believes that our other organs are still controllable by our reason after the fall).24 Ramsey, as with the scholars before him, believes that Augustine’s views on sex, sexuality, and marriage are the forces to be reckoned with should one want to put forth an alternate vision of marriage that has a focus on its unitive end rather than its procreative end. For him, Augustine’s views must be overcome because they seem to support a body/soul dualism that does not allow for sexuality to be as much a matter of the soul as the flesh. Ramsey suggests that the first marriage involved ‘‘enjoying one another in God, and their delight was, in some unimaginable way, a matter of both internal and external sensation.’’25 After the fall, however, there was massive disorder and disobedience. For Ramsey, the way beyond Augustine’s location of the disorder in sexual desire is to show that, in fact, there is ‘‘a relational or unitive function of spontaneous sexuality, and one of a very high order.’’26 Thus, in his consideration of Augustine’s views on sexuality across redemption history, Ramsey hopes to show that there is, ultimately, a positive spin on sexual spontaneity. He finds support for his view in Augustine’s vision of redemption. Because Christ has redeemed us, marriage in the world postChrist allows for the ‘‘restraint and remedy of marriage’’ for Christians who should be practicing celibacy instead. Marriage is not therefore a mere shadow of its glory in the age before Christ but a real institution touched by God in the incarnation. In Ramsey’s words, ‘‘Augustine’s ethical analysis takes the form of the motif of redemption entering realistically into the fallen world and grappling with it, redirecting and transforming it. Without this, ‘restraint and remedy’ [of marriage] would have meant static and hollow forms of preservation only.’’27 These conclusions lead to one of Ramsey’s major contentions: the history of sexuality is divided into b.c. and a.d. periods on the timeline. That is, like human history, human sexuality is involved in progression toward the ultimate End, but the telos of sexuality is celibacy. He says:

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preliminary arguments for a theology of households Whoever believes profoundly that in Jesus Christ the End-time of ultimate significance for human life has moved closer, and has actually invaded the present time and inaugurated a new age, must have already firmly in his mind some rigid dualistic view separating the soul from its sexuality in order not to have take shape in his mind something like this ancient periodization of the meaning of sexuality in God’s purposes.28

On Ramsey’s view anyone holding a view of realized eschatology, or even partially realized eschatology, has not fully appreciated just how interconnected are salvation history and sexuality. Ramsey notes how Augustine sees ‘‘increasing momentum’’ toward the kingdom of God, made visible by sheer numbers of virgins. Those who preserve virginal chastity are, in fact, members of the elect, and when all those here on earth are preserving such chastity, God’s will is fulfilled.29 Thus, ‘‘Augustine’s portrayal of the purposes of sexuality up to the time of Christ, and after Christ the acceleration of movement toward an ultimate End, was his way of telling a significant story.’’30 Ramsey’s account suggests that Augustine’s views on sex and sexuality are thus not so much about whether to be married or celibate, or even whether sex may have other goods than procreation, but have a much stronger accent on the story that Christ’s presence on earth changes the outlook on sex, and marriage is no longer an institution that must exist on the earth. Thus, Ramsey’s account of Augustine supports both John Paul II’s statements about celibacy and eschatology and Stephen Post’s views of marriage in the economy of salvation. This book takes seriously what these scholars have suggested about Augustine’s use of salvation history. This theological view of history is one of the ways that Augustine demonstrates his absorption into a scriptural worldview, and it appears from looking at these few scholars that doing an Augustinian theology of households would be bereft without attention to that history. One of the central questions that arises, though, is the extent to which Augustine does see salvation history at work in the ways Ramsey and others suggest. My argument is that theologically, Augustine views all states of life in the context of the entirety of salvation history, and he does not split states of life in terms of creation, on one hand, and eschatology, on the other. If that were the case, he could be accused of not being quite so wholly absorbed into the scriptural world. If that were the case, he would not be able to claim that a humble married woman is better than a prideful virgin, despite what Paul advocates in 1 Corinthians 7. This is because virginity as a redemptive and eschatological state of life would need to take priority in his conception of the world if he wished to remain Christologically-focused.


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On the contrary, on Augustine’s eudaimonistic view, virtue is directed toward the Good when the human will is rightly ordered and disposes a person toward love of God. Virtue is therefore a participation in Christ’s own life and, as Livio Melina puts it, ‘‘the middle term between who we are now and who we are called to be.’’31 The virtuous life is therefore also a participation in salvation history, and it is not limited to a state of life. Augustine exhorts people to be virtuous no matter what their state, because he expects that all Christians aim for a final friendship with God. In showing that states of life are intertwined via salvation history, then, Augustine is able to show that erroneously dichotomized groups of people (married and single) are unified in Christ, and especially in Christ’s body, the church. In this way, Augustine’s use of salvation history helps in our understanding of households, for we are able, on the one hand, to maintain distinctions between marriage and states of singleness, and, on the other, to show a unity in their resultant households, in part because the states of life share the same Christian story and direction in Christ. Indeed, they are wholly encompassed by that story.

The Importance of Liturgy and Sacrament A third component of Augustine’s thought that helps in the inquiry about the church and households is that the understanding of households cannot be intelligibly separated from the understanding of liturgical and sacramental practice in the church. Traditionally, theological reflection on liturgy and sacrament in relation to Christian life has been seen as belonging to Orthodox theologians, while the West has been seen as being concerned with more juridical matters about households, especially in terms of marriage and vowed celibacy. The separation between the Eastern vision and the Western vision has particularly been enjoined on Augustine. Paul Evdokimov suggests, in relation to Augustine, Luther, and other Western theologians: ‘‘One can see that the spring itself is muddied. Before preparing a theology from initial Biblical truths, one begins with the Fall and locks everything into the physiological, and it is from the outset that marriage appears unbalanced, marked with the wound of guilt.’’32 Westerners, he claims, focus too much on the guilt of Adam and Eve, and on the ways in which postlapsarian marriage bears the marks of that guilt in terms of childbearing, sex, and male/female roles. On Evdokimov’s view, before we ever get around to thinking about the fall in relation to marriage, we ought first to see marriage in relation to creation and salvation and especially in relation to the fact that marriage as instituted in

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the beginning did not even mention procreation. He sees that the procreative end has trumped all other views of marriage because Westerners begin with the fall.33 Evdokimov, too, recognizes the importance of salvation history. He sees this combined, however, with consideration of liturgy and sacraments. Among the Orthodox, liturgical rites are often dicsussed as a way to uncover theological meanings about marriage, family, celibacy, and eschatology, and the liturgical/sacramental worldview is almost of second nature to many. Evdokimov suggests: In history, if one is not among the saints, marriage is but a sociological cell, the legalized mating of those who ‘‘know not what they do.’’ The entire dignity of marriage, according to the agraphon quoted [by Clement of Rome as one of Jesus’ sayings], is revealed only at the appointed time, for it demands a great maturity of spirit and ascetic mastery of the Last Days. The alpha always carries its omega: ‘‘Behold I make the last things as the first,’’ but the end transcends the beginning, because it fulfills it. This is why the return to the sources of Truth takes place by going backward, but especially by going forward: ‘‘We remember that which is to come.’’ This amazing paradox of St. Gregory of Nyssa corresponds to the liturgy, which ‘‘recalls the Parousia.’’34 Evdokimov has it exactly right when he seeks to combine the liturgy and salvation history into one discussion. Though it may seem complicated at the outset to deal with so many apparent variables, I suspect it is also the case that none of these can legitimately be separated without the whole discussion veering dangerously away from theological concerns. Evdokimov is not convinced that Western theologians are able to reflect on marriage to the degree of perfection that Easterners are able, because, he believes, Westerners do not always appreciate the theological connections between scripture, liturgy, and salvation history. Augustine is one Western theologian who does this kind of theological reflection in his homilies and commentaries on psalms, as well as in his less liturgical treatises. For example, Augustine suggests that the Easter vigil is the ‘‘mother of all vigils’’ because here we are awake and watchful ‘‘for the glorious triumph of Christ.’’35 The Easter Vigil, which proclaims the life of Christ for us, also points us continually to baptism. Baptism is the beginning of the Christian life. J. D. Crichton reminds us that there is a ‘‘relationship between Christ’s Paschal Mystery and the sacrament of Baptism. The Epistle of the Mass, Romans 6:3–11, which has just been read and which reveals this relationship, shows that by Baptism we are able to participate in the death and resurrection of Christ.’’36 The baptized are Christ’s church, his evidently broken body. In baptism, salvation is narrated into our very bodies and we become


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part of a new, broken body. In the baptismal liturgy, we see already God’s gracious giving of a new creation and, indeed, of a new household. Thus it is, as Augustine notes in his sermons, that the newly baptized are called infants because they are newly born into a new way of life. As he writes, ‘‘You have, or had, parents of your flesh in the world. . . . God is Father, the Church is mother. You will be born of these parents very, very differently from the way you were born of those.’’37 His liturgical and sacramental concerns have great bearing for his outlook on what it means to be a member of a household. Augustine’s theological observations about liturgy and sacraments find resonance in contemporary theology, and thus may be an aid to thinking of households along these lines. In contemporary theology, there have been many strides toward thinking of the church’s liturgy beyond the juridical concerns of which Evdokimov complains. For example, Aidan Kavanaugh writes of liturgy as the church’s theologia prima: ‘‘The liturgy of faithful Christians is the primary theological act of the Church itself, and the ways in which this primary theological act carries on its own proper discourse are couched in terms of canonicity of content and structure, and in terms of eschatological survival.’’38 The importance of liturgy for theological thinking goes far beyond merely providing ‘‘material for second-order theological constructions.’’ It is itself theology, with all the usual aspects of theology contained therein, but it is also theology that cannot be abstracted. Thus Edward Kilmartin suggests that ‘‘a theological exposition of Christology would not be complete without reflection on the relationship of Christ to the liturgical activity of the Church.’’39 There can be no thinking about Christian theology that is intelligible apart from its relationship with the Christian life, which must include its worship. The corollary of thinking about liturgy as theology is that theological ethics (and conversations about sexual ethics in marriage and singleness) likewise cannot be separated from prima theologia. Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells suggest that liturgy is ethics: liturgy is a Christian way of life that forms and shapes practices. Vigen Guroian (an Orthodox theologian who has fruitful conversations with the West) says that Christian ethics ‘‘must incorporate sustained reflection on the liturgical prayer of the church.’’40 Liturgy as theology and liturgy as ethics provide enough of a beginning for seeing households in the context of liturgy as well. That is to say, one way an argument could proceed for considering households in the context of liturgy and sacrament is to see households as places where Christians practice their way of life, and that this relationship links households by mere association to Christian theology. But the theological connection seems much more complex than this. Bernd Wannenwetsch, for example, discusses public/private distinctions and especially separation between city and household. Wannenwetsch

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suggests that the church’s relationship to polis and oikos as well as its behavior toward them begin with the church’s worship.41 We understand what it means to be a citizen in God’s city and a member of God’s household through worship first. This is why liturgy as ethics is important to this book. Christian household living and the church’s liturgy make sense because they are related to each other intrinsically. The church’s own life, manifested in its liturgy and sacraments, reconfigures the Christian’s household. Most recently, David Matzko McCarthy has suggested about this connection, The wedding day does not mark the beginning of a new family; indeed, it is a consequence and outgrowth of a kinship and community of faith. Christian marriage is not a whole communion of two, but a particular kind of grace-filled friendship within the fellowship of the Church. This claim will be spelled out . . . in relation to practices of discipleship, baptism, and Eucharist.42 To spell this out, I think we miss some of the significance of baptism, for instance, if we do not take into account what it means when we bathe at home or bathe our children. We miss part of the Eucharist if we are not also able to eat at our own tables. The church and the household are determinative for each other, and this point runs in contrast to some of the prominent theologies about marriage and singleness mentioned earlier in this chapter and in chapter 1. It is worth noting that liturgical and sacramental life goes hand in hand with scriptural absorption and salvation history. One reason is that Christians know the salvation story because of liturgical practice, especially in the story we hear year after year in the high holy days of the tridiuum. The tridiuum, and especially the Easter vigil, is the time when the entirety of God’s salvific acts is celebrated. Christ is the center from which everything else is known and understood. We only see creation rightly because with Christ’s coming we also see our eschatological end. In the Vigil we narrate Christ’s redeeming work. As J. D. Crichton suggests, ‘‘The Easter Vigil is a celebration of the total Paschal Mystery because by word, symbol, and rite it recalls almost every phase of Christ’s redeeming work and fuses into a whole the saving work of God in the Old Testament with Christ’s redemption in the New Testament.’’43

Some Further Thoughts about Augustine as Interlocutor It is important, finally, to make some more general remarks about Augustine’s presence in this book. Augustine’s views are important not only because


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I think they represent the best of the arguments of the time but also because his work was so widely disseminated throughout the church over the next several centuries. As has been suggested by many scholars (with whom I tend to agree), his views on marriage, and the closely related subject of sexuality, have dominated Western theological thought.44 What is perhaps more astonishing than my use of Augustine in a book on households, then, is that I think Augustine actually provides some theology worth reading and discussing in the contemporary era. A second point about using Augustine: in this book, I provide a theologian’s account of the way Augustine views households. I am indebted to historians working specifically with Augustine and his historical context, and I have much to learn from them, but I cannot and do not claim to be doing their work. Gilbert Meilaender suggests in his own theological reflection on Augustine, ‘‘I take [Augustine] up for the somewhat different reason that, in thinking about certain perennial problems of the moral life, I find that he seldom fails to illumine my own sight or provoke me to fresh thought.’’45 I see my task as similar to Meilaender’s so that while I do try to attend to Augustine’s historical context, I am more concerned with showing Augustine’s theological argument and suggesting how his way of arguing ‘‘provokes’’ and ‘‘illumines’’ contemporary theology. Third, in any account that deals with Augustine, it is nearly impossible not to encounter his views on nature and grace, and this is definitely true of the present work. The problems and questions concerning nature and grace are not the primary focus of this book, though, of course, my understanding of Augustine on these points supports how I understand his telling of salvation history, and marriage and virginity along with it. Salvation history is, after all, a history of God’s grace and our participation in it, and part of my argument in this book is that all Christian states of life can be part of that history of grace. Some of Augustine’s views on nature and grace will therefore come through quite clearly in the following chapters, but I include this brief section here as a way to discuss more directly how Augustine works through these theological points. This section therefore provides a more direct (though brief ) delineation of a theme that echoes throughout the next three chapters. Concerning nature, we may note that there are at least two different understandings of nature with which Augustine works. There is created nature, which humans receive before the fall and which bears the characteristics of male and female sexed bodies that rightly desire the Good, that devote all their faculties, especially the will, to loving God, and that are capable of obeying God (for example, procreation, as we shall see in chapter 3).46 This natural state is imbued with grace from its beginnings; it is not simply subsumed into grace,

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or supernature. That is to say, Augustine (and Adam and Eve) knew that there was a distinction between themselves and God. Nonetheless, they were able to freely participate in God’s life, through grace. Thus, Augustine writes, ‘‘Human beings, after all, are not the sort of things that, once made and left to themselves by the one who made them, could do anything well all by themselves. No, the sum total of their good activity is to turn to him by whom they were made, and by him always to be made just, godfearing, wise, and blessed.’’47 Even before the fall, then, humans had to turn to God for the grace to be just, wise, and blessed, to live the good life. The original, created state of affairs did not last long, however. At some point in Eden, the first humans turned their desire from God and put it on themselves. Wrongful desire and selfish pride brought about a fall. Augustine writes, ‘‘As far as a nature distorted by its own wicked will is concerned, it has no recourse in itself, but only in the grace of God, by which it is helped and restored.’’48 Note that this fall was not, therefore, a fall from nature but a fall from grace, for the natural state at creation was one that was already present and well ordered because of God’s grace. The manifestations of fallen nature in human bodies are bodily members that war against the rational mind; that is, our minds potentially see what is the good, but they are unable to do good because our bodies turn toward themselves and do what they will, though not necessarily in accordance with the Good. More often than not, as Stephen Duffy notes, it is this second postlapsarian understanding of nature to which Augustine refers in his works, especially against the Pelagians: fallen nature in desperate need of the restoration of its original grace-filled life.49 Sexual desire and lust evidence these negative effects of the fall. Many scholars have found themselves perplexed and even angered when they encounter Augustine’s views of sexual desire and lust because they see, as his own contemporaries saw, that Augustine puts perhaps too much stress on sexual desire as evil. Thus many have devoted themselves to discussions of Augustine and sexual desire, often attempting to shed what they see as a more positive light on Augustine’s view of sexual desire and passion.50 As Duffy notes correctly, however, sexual desire is not the primary point Augustine tries to make. It functions rather as a case in point for a broader discussion of theological anthropology and our relationship with God as sinners.51 Such sin was only redeemed by God’s grace, most especially in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The church and its sacraments provide another locus for discussing grace operating in people’s lives. While sacrament was much less developed and less well defined for Augustine than in the present day,52 nonetheless, he developed something of a sacramental theology, particularly in response to the


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Donatist controversy. Concerning the sacraments, Augustine writes, ‘‘Christ heals, Christ cleanses, Christ justifies.’’53 The sacraments are efficacious because of Christ, not because of the holiness of the priests and deacons presiding. Sacrament involves grace, for Augustine, because it is through them that we are cleansed from sin (via baptism) and enjoy the unity of all Christians (via the Eucharist). Sacraments bind us in unity to the visible church; those who disrupt that unity, such as the Donatists, are still united to the church via the physical sign but do not still have the grace of the Holy Spirit that was given in that sacrament. Marriage has a direct connection to this sacramental unity; it is not simply a natural good, attributable only to created nature. Marriage is a grace-filled institution, especially so for Christians because of the so-called sacramental end of marriage, a bond of unity that signifies the unified ‘‘city of people with a single heart and a single soul turned to God.’’54 As we shall see in this book, however, it is the case that for Christians, there are many states of life and many resultant households that can be part of God’s own gracious life, by grace. Indeed, in Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 50 he writes, ‘‘It is evident then that He has called human beings gods in the sense that they were deified by his grace, not because they were born of his substance.’’55 The distinction that is made between marriage and virginity is therefore not one of marriage as a natural good and virginity as a result of grace. Rather, both are bound up in a life of grace. Augustine’s views on sacraments as outward signs of inward grace are an important piece often missing from accounts of his understanding of nature and grace. The Christian’s life is filled with grace: it is by grace that one is converted to God, by grace that the church receives the sacraments, by grace that the sacraments can be properly bestowed on any Christian, and by grace that any Christian is able to be an upright person well formed in the ways of God. Beasts we can be, but to be a human living in sight of God’s eternal blessedness requires grace. None of what I shall say in this book about states of life, moral formation, liturgy, or the church should be read apart from this understanding of grace.

Conclusions In what specific ways, then, does this chapter bear on the discussion in chapter 1? Don Browning is correct: theological concerns have been missing from considerations of marriage in recent years, but it is not the case that ‘‘adding’’ theological concerns to a secular conversation about marriage thereby leads to proper functioning of society (though that could be a side effect). Rather, given proper focus, theological considerations rooted in scripture, liturgy, and our

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very history with God lead to a much broader community than our contemporary society often imagines. That community is the church as Household of God, together with its constituent households, which is able to hold in tension marriage, virginity, widowhood, and other states of life, even in its own state of life as the virgin Body of Christ. The dichotomies mentioned in chapter 1 fall, unable to stand in the face of the revelation of Jesus Christ. To a certain extent, I see myself doing in this book what Eastern Orthodox theologians have already done with respect to marriage, virginity, and liturgy. I am, however, unapologetically Western, and I wish to enter the Western theological conversation. My focus on salvation history and liturgy therefore takes into account some of the critiques that Eastern theologians have made regarding Western attitudes toward marriage, but my use of Augustine delves into those aspects in different ways. Augustine’s method, as I shall try to show in subsequent chapters, involves two main provocations. One is that in consequence of seeing scripture as all-encompassing, Augustine cannot help but view marriage and singleness as gathered into the history of salvation. Creation, fall, Israel, redemption in Christ, the presence of the church, and the eschaton all shape his understanding of households. The second point is that the church, as the point of salvation history where Christians live now, reforms people’s identities and their senses of what makes for a household. This point comes across especially in Augustine’s homilies dedicated to observations about the church’s liturgical life, but it also comes across in Augustine’s grappling with the meaning of the eschaton. Rather than being either a problem to be solved or the cure-all for our social ills, the Christian household must be seen as redeemed by Christ and part of the eschatological fulfillment. That is, the problems as I have named them in chapter 1 are continuing manifestations of the problems brought about by the fall, and a proper view of these problems means seeing how Christ has redeemed them. Problems with gender relationships both within and outside marriage, an overemphasis on sex as the defining characteristic of marriage and celibacy, and a tendency to see public and private distinctions between family and state are all direct outcomes of fallen relationships. In terms of salvation history, therefore, it is no mistake that culturally we see marriage, family, and single people both as a huge problem and as a crowning ideal; this simply emphasizes the eschatological character of marriage as ‘‘already’’ but ‘‘not-yet.’’ We continually try to live out the ‘‘last things’’ without even seeing that they exist. Just as Sarah Coakley suggests that Judith Butler’s postmodern theory about gender narrates a latent desire for eschatology, so too I think that contemporary (postmodern) culture’s views of marriage as separate from singleness narrate a latent desire for eschatology, only in terms of


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seeing the final, finished, good product as that of functioning marriages, with singleness seen generally as a problem.56 In the next two chapters, I attempt to deflect this kind of reasoning by seeing both marriage and single states of life in the economy of salvation; the result of this kind of vision is to see that marriage and single states of life belong to ever-expanding understandings of households and cannot exist as separate states of life, in the face of Christ and Christ’s redemption. My considerations of states of life lead to thoughts about households in the present moment of salvation history, the time between Christ’s ascension and Christ’s coming again, and how this view of salvation history affects gender and public/ private concerns. Christians live out the in-between times in the church, as the Household of God, and this in turn continues to reconfigure Christian notions of households. Thus, by following Augustine’s methods, I claim that Christian theological understandings of homes cannot be separated intelligibly from our understanding of the history of salvation, how God has worked in covenant with the Jewish people, and, with the coming of Christ, how God engrafted Gentiles onto the covenant and made them part of God’s people via baptism in the church’s own liturgical Household.57


part ii

Intertwining Households States of Life in Salvation History


3 Marriage in Creation, Fall, and Redemption Against Gendered Dichotomies

In contemporary theology, the connection between creation, the fall, and marriage is quite strong. Most theologians and ethicists recognize the importance of the Genesis texts for theologically understanding marriage and family. Therein lies the struggle, however, because attention to the Genesis texts necessitates grappling with male and female gender roles (Adam as the lord over Eve) and issues about procreation (the injunction to ‘‘be fruitful and multiply’’). Immediately, gender and sex and gendered roles become central issues, and thus my considerations in this chapter will help in thinking about gendered dichotomies discussed in chapter 1. A tendency in feminist theory in the past few decades has been, ironically, to perpetuate its own series of dichotomous thoughts: constructivist/essentialist; sex/gender; nature/nurture; natural body/ constructed body. This is ironic because many scholars have wanted to seek ways beyond the problematic dichotomies they saw in traditional male/female conceptions of the world. Augustine of Hippo helps here, perhaps unexpectedly. On my reading, Augustine’s focus is the nature of relationships between men and women, and how those relationships are about being in friendship with and following God. Dichotomous thinking, both male/female and constructivist/essentialist, makes little sense on Augustine’s worldview, because male/ female cannot be intelligibly separated from each other, and because human sex/gender is to some extent ‘‘essential’’ in that God has created it, but it is also ‘‘constructed’’ in that it can become a new

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intertwining households

creation in full communion with God. The primordial relationship between man and woman is one of the many things that Christ restored, but marriage as we thought it was is not what is restored. God in Christ restores and even adds to the marital relationship, to the point that marriage becomes one major way to understand not just male/female relationships but all human relationships, in and through the church. This chapter also provides the necessary beginning examination of marriage and singleness in salvation history, though the full consequence of Augustine’s use of salvation history will not be known until the end of chapter 4. We also have seen, in chapter 2, the ways in which marriage and celibacy relate to salvation history as states of life, especially in the work of Paul Ramsey. He reduced consideration of salvation history to marriage, celibacy, and sexuality. Augustine’s vision of salvation history is much more intricate than this and ends up being a far more wide-reaching idea about human friendship, humanity’s relationship with God, and also households, rather than states of life specifically, or distinctions about sexuality. The reader may well wonder why I do not simply discuss marriage and singleness together, especially in light of my argument that Christ, via the church, makes the dichotomy of marriage and singleness extremely problematic. Part of the reason is that a distinction between marriage and states of singleness is still helpful, even though a dichotomous separation is disastrous and makes both ways of life incomprehensible. This chapter will not make complete sense, in other words, unless chapter 4 is also read.

Creation: ‘‘On This Account God Willed to Create All People out of One . . .’’ The ‘‘beginning’’ of salvation history is of course with Genesis and the account of God’s creating male and female, pronouncing the great blessing to ‘‘be fruitful and fill the earth,’’ and calling them very good. Readers are bound to say, ‘‘Here is the time when marriage was created; it was created along with people.’’ But the story itself calls even this assumption into question: if we are paying attention to the scriptures, we may be rather disconcerted by parts of the story, especially the fact that there appears to be, first, a creation of male and female (Gen. 1:26–27), and later, a second creation of Adam and Eve (Gen. 2:19–23). This suggests that the creation of marriage is not quite as natural as some would want it to be. Or maybe, like many who read the story, we simply merge the two parts of creation, concluding that the second account of creation is simply the second act of one creation story.

marriage in creation, fall, and redemption

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Scholars familiar with the works of feminist theologians are bound to be troubled by certain other aspects of the creation stories. Eve already seems to be lesser than Adam, since she is made from Adam’s rib and not from mud. Accordingly, some might prefer to read Genesis 1 over Genesis 2, perhaps even omitting the Adam and Eve account of creation from memory so as to emphasize the supposed greater equality between men and women seen in the first chapter of the book. Another highly troubling aspect might be the emphasis on procreation, and some might remember the account of the fall and the fact that there, woman is given the punishment of difficult labor in childbirth and receives a highly shameful state of subjection to her male counterpart. Thus even the great blessing is colored and tempered by later, related, punishment. Augustine, too, considers these troubling factors, and he does so by seeing creation of men and women, and their marriage, in two stages.

The First Moment: Marriage in Potentiality Augustine’s work displays something of an obsession with the story of creation. He wrote directly about it in nearly every capstone work, including Confessions and The City of God.1 Between 387/388 and 405, he attempted three treatises that interpreted Genesis and provided an exegetical account of the scriptures (as opposed to his other accounts of creation that are certainly scripturally based but focus more on creation in relation to the rest of his overarching theological project, such as his ruminations on time and memory in Confessions).2 I focus here on the third, as the most helpful and most profuse account. The Literal Interpretation of Genesis,3 his third treatise, provides a discussion and defense of a doctrine of creation, not only against the Manichaean heresy but also against other problematic interpretations that had surfaced. It is therefore a more complex treatise than the other two. One point of central importance to this book is that Augustine directly names another of his works, The Excellence of Marriage, in the text and therefore makes explicit the connection between his understanding of creation and his understanding of marriage.4 Augustine contrasts this literal account of Genesis, by which he means that these events happened in some way, with a figurative sense, by which he means ‘‘one ought to note what eternal realities are there suggested, what deeds are recounted, what future events foretold, what actions commanded or advised.’’5 Accordingly, Augustine wrestles directly with the question of why there are two creation accounts in Genesis, which affects how he understands the creation of men and women and of marriage. Creation is one story that

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Augustine particularly names as having both a prophetic and a literal sense, because he sees that Christ’s coming to earth must have some sort of reference to previous works God has done, but he also sees that these events are part of human history. By contrast, Paul Ramsey’s concern as discussed in chapter 2 is to show that Augustine focuses on the Christological import of creation, but he lacks a description of the multifaceted nature of Augustine’s telling. Ramsey only sees one moment of creation; but Augustine specifically focuses on the two moments, which impacts his views of marriage and gender. Augustine ponders the fact that in Genesis 1:26–31, God appears to make male and female in his image, but later, woman appears to be made outside those six days. He deals with this distinction by suggesting that the first six days of creation are ‘‘spiritual time’’ in which things could be done simultaneously, so that each ‘‘day’’ mentioned in Genesis 1 is all completed on the first day. At the end of this spiritual time, all things have been created in potentiality, but nothing has active participation in God’s life as of yet. The second story, then, tells of God’s work in creation and the ways in which God’s continual creation yields creatures that are continually participating in God’s own life. For example, God is depicted as molding and shaping trees over time.6 In similar fashion, Adam was brought to Paradise and put to sleep so that Eve could be made from his rib, but this all happened over intervals of time and not simultaneously. It is therefore fitting to describe Augustine’s accounts of the two stories as two moments in the same story.7 So it is, for example, that in the second chapter of Genesis Adam is suddenly in a place called Paradise, which Augustine reads as not having been created yet in the first chapter of Genesis. Augustine further explains his solution to the problem of two creation stories by addressing a set of assertions that he believes to be false. He rejects a contention that the second creation story (Gen. 2:7; 2:18–22) is merely a recapitulation of the first but instead says that it belongs to the work God ‘‘goes on working through the march of time until now.’’8 The problem with the recapitulation theory, says Augustine, is that one ends up needing to say that all God created in the first six days was somehow a repository for the stuff that God would later form more fully, such that it looks like God hides away his work in ‘‘some secret workshop.’’9 On his view, however, man and woman are both fully formed in a potential way. Humans in their first creation were created ‘‘invisibly, potentially, in their causes, in the way things to come are made when they have not yet been made in actual fact.’’10 To say otherwise detracts from Augustine’s insistence on creatio ex nihilo.11 It also detracts from God’s foreknowledge. Throughout his work, Augustine suggests that God foreknows what he creates and knows the ordered purposes of every created thing. Thus Augustine’s working through of this


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problem of causation is crucial because it suggests that what is important from the beginnings of maleness and femaleness is not sexuality or marriage as such but the place of male and female humans in the ordering of creation. Body and soul are created potentially; at some point in the future, Adam (and all of us) will live in the Paradise specially created for us. This is natural law at its best, because created nature is also bound up in the hope of Paradise for Adam and likewise for us. Augustine notes that God continually works through creation and created the particular man named Adam and the particular woman named Eve in Paradise. He sees the created order, before the fall, as sustained and upheld by grace. God directly speaks to humanity in this way even now, otherwise we would not be able to know who God is. God addressed [the potentially formed male and female] in the same way as Christ addressed us when we were not yet born and only due to arrive on the scene so long in the future—and not only us but also all those who are going to be born after us. It was to all, I mean, whom he knew would be his in the future that he said: Behold I am with you up to the very end of time (Mt. 28:20).12 Augustine’s sense of potentiality as being an event of creation carried through to the eschaton suggests continuity with all that is created in Genesis, and all that is caught up in God’s life at the end of time. What, precisely, is created in potentiality for Augustine? He suggests that both men and women are created in potentiality, but what about marriage? Augustine raises a question in book IX where he speaks both of creation in potentiality and also of gendered creation: ‘‘why was woman created?’’ His answer is that woman was created already for the purpose of marriage and procreation. Contemporary scholars may see only that Augustine here thinks woman is created only for procreative purposes (which I will discuss in more detail later), and perhaps miss another salient point: marriage is created in potentiality precisely because both men and women are created as well. Already, we can see, against Ramsey’s contention, that human sexuality could not be formed after the fall as an add-on, any more than the human body could be formed at a later, nonpotential time.13 All things are created in potentiality, including a human relationship between man and woman. Augustine therefore fully closes the door on any theories of his near contemporaries, such as those of John Chrysostom, that suggest marriage is created by God only after the fall. The significance of this point is that John Chrysostom sees that restored humanity is virginal because virginity was the original Edenic state to which we are restored. Augustine’s vision suggests, however, that restored humanity is married because marriage is the original

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Edenic state to which we are restored. Marriage is created in full potentiality, in God’s knowledge of its participation in the history of salvation, even as men and women are; there cannot be an intelligible understanding of marriage before Christ but virginity after Christ unless there is a re-narration of what it means to be married and to be a virgin. Augustine will provide precisely this kind of re-narration in his discussions of marriage after the redemption of Christ, as we shall see later. Virginity becomes a way of living out humanity’s original married state, which greatly extends the understanding of marriage and, likewise, of Christian households. Moreover, because marriage, as human relationship, exists at the beginning, relationships between humans also figure prominently in the economy of salvation. Friendship is a necessary component of what it means to be made male and female.

The Second Moment: Obedience to God Given that male and female, and thereby marriage, are created in potentiality at the first moment of creation, it is necessary to consider the second moment of creation for Augustine: the time when God moves Adam to Paradise, causes him to sleep, and forms Eve from Adam’s rib because the description of this second moment tells how humans are participants in God’s life. Theologians have often asked what our primary purpose is, and how it is that we may share in God’s life. Often the answer involves some combination of praising and being obedient to God’s will in our lives. In describing creation with respect to marriage, Augustine is particularly concerned with the commands God gives to Adam and Eve and the manner in which they are obeyed. The theme of obedience comes up again and again, not only in The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, but also in The Excellence of Marriage and many other texts. For Augustine, obedience and the concern for God’s order are linked. When we read Augustine’s telling of creation in light of obedience and the maintenance of order, questions regarding sex, sexuality, and gender take on a much different meaning. In the Genesis text, marriage relates explicitly to creation of gender and to God’s command to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. Astonishing or ironic as it may seem to some, Augustine’s work on this question helps us to see gender and marriage in relation to the church and its patriarchal systems in a new and more positive light. By making this claim I am by no means suggesting that Augustine offers a vision of a nonpatriarchal society or that his views on women are particularly egalitarian. Quite to the contrary, I tend to agree with many twentieth-century and twenty-first-century scholars who have excoriated Augustine precisely for the fact that it was his theological anthro-


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pology that the modern church upheld in the face of gender questions, and therefore it was his theology that created, in part, an antiwoman atmosphere.14 What Augustine does offer, however, is a chance to reconceptualize theologically what it means to be created male and female, an important point that is often deliberately overlooked because of genuine theological disagreement on the question of gender. Theologians have gotten caught up in the debate about constructivism and essentialism, or the question of whether gender is socially made or biologically essential for who we are as people. Social constructivism has often been seen as a path of greater potential for benefiting women who see themselves bearing the brunt of patriarchal abuse because it suggests that contemporary patterns and problems women face can be changed. Conversely, a positive view of gender essentialism suggests that women have particular, unique characteristics that greatly aid society, if women are given a chance to live up to their full potential as women. The problem with both of these views is that they tend to treat gender as an isolated event, separate from identity that comes from being made male and female in the image of God. In The Excellence of Marriage, Augustine introduces friendship as one of the goods of marriage, which is as important to understanding gendered relationships as the often-stated goods of unity/sacrament, fidelity, and procreation. The goods of marriage are not, in other words, limited to those three ends so often cited. Every human being is part of the human race, and the human nature is a social entity, and has naturally the great benefit and power of friendship. For this reason God wished to produce all persons out of one, so that they would be held together in their social relationships not only by similarity of race, but also by the bond of kinship. The first natural bond of society, therefore, is that of husband and wife. God did not create them as separate individuals and bring them together as persons of a different race, but he created them one from the other, making the side, from which the woman was taken and formed, a sign of the strength of their union. For those who walk together, and look ahead together to where they are walking, do so at each other’s side.15 What is clear for Augustine from the outset of this early work is that humans have friendship with each other and are directed toward relationship with each other as a result of our created nature. Men and women were not originally created to be in opposition to each other. Marriage is related to friendship more generally, which Augustine calls a great and natural good. As

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Donald X. Burt observes about Augustine on friendship: ‘‘The good that marriage brings to the human race and to the spouses is not restricted to the children that may be produced. It also includes the natural companionship of husband and wife.’’16 Indeed, it is essential to note that prior to ever discussing the famed three ends of marriage, Augustine first brings to mind the fact that marriage is instituted because humanity is social, directed toward the good of friendship. Friendship is a natural good of marriage; on Augustine’s account it is part of the created order of marriage and exists even after the fall. Other goods that may be characterized socially include fidelity and procreation.17 The sacramental end of marriage, which is limited to Christian marriages, ‘‘symbolizes the union of all races in submission to the one man Christ,’’ which suggests, again, a strong fellowship between human beings.18 In fact, this unity is more important than the procreative end of marriage and the numbers of children one has, for Augustine suggests that the unity bestowed in marriage is far more important than the children that might come from that union.19 Augustine assesses the relationship between women and men more fully in his exposition of the Genesis texts in The Literal Interpretation of Genesis. Why is it that men and women are necessarily together? For what purpose is woman created as a ‘‘help’’ for Adam? Augustine’s interpretation offers confusion here, because he seems to contradict what was said in The Excellence of Marriage. Woman was not created to help man with working the earth, he maintains, because in Eden there was no need to till the earth for food. Nor was it for the comfort of another’s presence because of too much solitude, nor was it for the ordering of the world in order to have peace in the household (as in having one person to command, the other to obey).20 And if she was created for friendship, well, Augustine says, relationships between men solely or women solely are much easier to maintain, and more suitable than those that are crossgendered.21 In other words, the necessity of woman does not have to do with maintaining livelihood, with human companionship, or with cultivating the virtue of justice, all of which deal with the social aspect of humanity. If one is seriously reading Augustine, then, the hard task comes in understanding how Augustine can speak of friendship in marriage in The Excellence of Marriage and yet in the (slightly later) manuscript The Literal Interpretation of Genesis appear to reject friendship as the reason for woman’s creation. The key to understanding this point (and to reconceptualizing gender) comes in Augustine’s writing about procreation.22 His views about procreation offer a more positive account of both childbearing and gender than is often ascribed to his work. There are many who, especially recently, wish to see that an emphasis on procreation equates women with baby-breeding machines. On the


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contrary, the creation of woman occurred precisely so that they could obey the command of God given in Genesis 1:27–28: ‘‘Male and Female he made them, and God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply and fill the earth and lord it over it.’’ This command had been given to them, on Augustine’s view of the two moments in creation, before Adam was created and installed in the Garden of Eden. Both man and woman in their potentialities were able to hear and know this command prophetically.23 Indeed, Augustine spends a seemingly inordinate amount of time discussing whether or not the potential humans in the garden could have heard and understood God’s commands at that point.24 The reason it makes sense for Augustine to digress and treat the question about whether potential humanity can hear God’s commands is because that is one of the primary foci he has when he comes to describe the creation of woman. The point of woman’s creation, in the Literal Interpretation of Genesis account, is for procreation; but procreation itself exists to fulfill God’s command and participate in God’s justice and ordering of the earth.25 Augustine’s emphasis on procreation showcases his overriding concern of participation in God’s life and created order. What this means, in support of what he suggests about marriage as instituted for social ties and friendship in The Excellence of Marriage, is that man and woman are both necessary to each other or else God has already set them up for failure before they were ever created. The creation of woman is the means by which humanity does not simply become entranced with itself and with Paradise. God has given the command and humanity, male and female, is called to fulfill it. Procreation is not, on Augustine’s terms, solely about generating children for the sake of a mortal race; it is about obeying God’s command, and thereby praising God through obedience. He says this in book IX of The Literal Interpretation of Genesis: ‘‘This, after all, is what was said at the first establishment of things: Male and female he made them, and God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply and fill the earth and lord it over it (Gn 1:27–28) This reason for the setting up and joining together of male and female and this blessing did not fall away after the man’s sin and punishment.’’26 Later in the same book, he suggests, in relation to his contemporaries’ suspicion that there was no sexual intercourse until after the expulsion from the Garden: ‘‘God could have granted them this if they had lived in a faithful and just manner in obedient and holy service to Him, so that without the tumultuous ardor of passion and without any labor and pain of childbirth, offspring would be born from their seed. In this case, the purpose would not be to have children succeeding parents who die.’’27 Sex was therefore possible before the fall, as a means to be obedient to God. It is obedience to God and the inclination of the human will toward God that occupy Augustine at nearly every point in his

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essay. The command to be fruitful and multiply was a command and the wish of God with respect to creation; therefore, humans wanting to be in communion with God ought to fulfill it. In saying this, I am not therefore saying that we must procreate lest we be disobedient. Indeed, Augustine says that marriages without children are also good; old age and natural infertility are not reasons to prohibit marriage for fear of disobedience. My point here is mainly about the ontological reasons for man and woman to be created. The fact of Christ’s coming and redemption of humanity, along with his eschatological reign—as we shall see later—give new direction to the commandment ‘‘be fruitful’’ in terms of generating new children in baptism. The question that Augustine raises about friendship in The Excellence of Marriage is thus intertwined with this command to procreate and not just simply because without procreation, there are no people with whom to be friends. It is impossible to have any sort of communion and friendship with God unless we are able to listen to and obey what God says. In other words, friendship with God depends on men and women being able to have friendships with each other.28 To compound this conclusion, Augustine clearly states that begetting children (before the fall) does not limit the possibilities of humans to find blessedness in God. He writes, ‘‘I still cannot see what could have prevented their also being wedded with honor and bedded without spot or wrinkle in Paradise, God granting this right to them if they lived faithfully in justice and served him obediently in holiness.’’29 Such participation in God’s order would eventually have led to conversion ‘‘without dying into something of a different kind, and be entirely at the beck and call of the spirit governing them . . . ; their bodies would in fact be called spiritual.’’30 What Augustine posits in procreation, therefore, is a kind of twofold participation in divine life: first, a participation in God’s created order, and second, a more close participation in God’s own life. Thus, Augustine’s understanding of procreation goes deeper than the simple mechanistic idea that women bear children because their bodies are made for such activity. When Augustine says that woman was created for procreation, he does not mean that women are therefore baby-breeding machines, nor that marriage equals procreation in some sort of mathematical formula; he means that the whole of humankind participates in the blessings and commands of God given to it at the beginning of creation. His view of procreation engenders an entire way of life between Adam and Eve, one that includes friendship as well as the traditional three aims of marriage. With the creation of woman we see the first unequivocal depiction of marriage. This is because Augustine sees that marriage is the reason woman was created, and that reason is precisely to praise God above all else.


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This leads to a conception of marriage that is, as Augustine put it in The Excellence of Marriage, devoted to friendship, but especially friendship with God. Such friendship takes on the character of obedience, participation in God’s ordering of creation. Augustine bolsters this view still further in his later work The City of God.31 He writes, Man, on the other hand, whose nature was to be a mean between angelic and bestial, He created in such sort, that if he remained in subjection to His Creator as his rightful Lord, and piously kept His commandments, he should pass into the company of the angels, and obtain, without the intervention of death, a blessed and endless immortality. . . . And therefore God created only one single man, not, certainly, that he might be a solitary bereft of all society, but that by this means the unity of society and the bond of concord might be more effectually commended to him, being bound together not only by similarity of nature but by family affection.32 Augustine’s main point here is that, in contrast to certain animals, humans were created to be in unity with each other, all following God’s commandments together. Augustine’s vision of marriage in creation is helpful for contemporary theology because he suggests that original created order represents a time when men and women were not pitted against each other or against God. Men and women, in particular, have a bond together because they uniquely share a relationship via Adam’s side.33 Moreover, through obedience in procreation before the fall, and in our natural state, we may attain immortal, blessed life. Grace and nature are entangled. Thus it is that both men and women are required to exist, by necessity, in order to be ultimately obedient to God and fulfill the human telos. Adam could not have fulfilled his created purpose alone. Humans, men and women, fulfill their created purpose together. What this suggests theologically is that gender distinctions are necessary, and it is only through rightly ordered gendered relationships that we shall, in fact, find our true end in God. This point still leaves the question, though, of how gendered roles might be considered.

Fallen Humanity: The Great Tragedy and the Great Grace of Marriage As with creation, Augustine’s discussions of the fall gain some mention in most of his works. Unlike with his discussion of creation, however, the fall is

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more often related to discussions of sin now widely encountered in our world. The fall, as part of the creation story, is therefore less entrancing to him than creation or the way things might have been. The present era, in which we already know the sin that we received from those first two human beings, requires a less-pressing need for delineation and description than the time before we were created. For Augustine, part of this change in emphasis comes about from his experience with and refutation of the Manichees. He needed to demonstrate, against the Manichees’ dualistic, two-god version of creation, that evil was not created by God but generated by humans as part of profound disobedience. But Joseph Torchia offers another option in Augustine’s relative lack of information on the fall, subsequent human history, and redemption: Augustine, like other early church fathers, sees the beginning of Genesis as encapsulating ‘‘human history from our creation to our eternal rest in paradise.’’34 Thus, there is no real need, on Torchia’s view, for Augustine to discuss the fall or redemption separately from his exegesis of the initial creation stories in Genesis. Much has been written about Augustine’s accounts of the fall, especially since he seems to have been contradictory about what the fall meant for humanity.35 For the purposes of this book, it is not necessary to attend to all the facets of Augustine’s accounts of the fall but instead to see that the key question Augustine addresses is whether or not humans obeyed God at the beginning and what effect this has on humanity, and particularly the relationship professed in marriage. A subsequent and very important question Augustine asks is whether or not humans can obey God in a postlapsarian sense, which leads, of course, to his considerations of predestination and grace. When Augustine considers the fall, he sees that the result of disobedience is first and foremost death (rather than sexual proclivities, as some might suggest); this is evident in the several places where he suggests that postlapsarian procreation is most often for the sake of replacing the dead. For example, he writes, ‘‘When they forfeited this [Edenic] condition, then, their bodies contracted that liability to disease and death which is present in the flesh of animals—and thus also that motion of the genitals which stirs in animals the desire to mate, and so ensures the birth of young to take the place of those who die.’’36 Augustine suggests that we were created to be a mean between the beasts and the angels; with the fall, however, this is no longer a possibility. We have taken death on ourselves, and we have secured our place as beasts rather than aspiring to be angels. The story of the fall and its results is one in which Adam and Eve radically disobey God by obeying another’s voice, one that is neither human nor divine nor gendered. Augustine considers what was lost in the fall:


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If they had lived lives of justice and obedience, then change would be brought about by which their merely ‘‘ensouled’’ animal bodies would be converted without dying into a different kind and be entirely at the beck and call of the spirit governing them . . . and this could have happened if the transgression of the commandment had not earned the punishment of death.37 The great tragedy of humankind’s turning away from God culminates in being dismissed abruptly from the garden and sent to toil on the earth. Likewise, childbearing is painful and difficult because of the sins done in Paradise. The death that ensues from our fallen nature then leads to further disobedience, which takes the form of disobedience in unsociability. Thus Augustine says in The City of God, ‘‘For there is nothing so social by nature, so unsocial by its corruption, as this race. And human nature has nothing more appropriate, either for the prevention of discord, or for the healing of it, where it exists, than the remembrance of that first parent of us all.’’38 The result of the fall is not simply that our relationships with God are disfigured; we can no longer be friends with each other, nor can we fulfill who it is that God has created us to be. Some contemporary feminist theologians have taken to task the idea that original sin and evil are mired in disobedience, seeing that a focus on disobedience, especially on the part of Eve, serves to perpetuate unhealthy views of women. One line of argument suggests that women, as the first instigators of the sin, are necessarily also the people who must pay for their sin by being obedient in the way that Mary was obedient.39 Augustine, however, is not wholly, or even mostly, ascribing the blame to women; when it comes to sin, both men and women have a share. As Kari Elisabeth Børresen suggests, ‘‘If Augustine hesitates to emphasize Eve’s weakness even to the point of doubting her responsibility, he is quite sure that Adam’s greater intelligence makes him even more responsible.’’40 Though Augustine’s conclusion about Adam’s intelligence over against Eve’s is problematic in considerations about contemporary views of gender, part of his point is also to consider that the nature of sin is something borne by both people. The significance of Augustine’s point here is that just as we cannot obey God’s commandments except when we are in communion with each other as men and women, so too we cannot disobey except that both men and women are disrupting the relationship. In the postlapsarian world, we are abjectly unable to be the social creatures we were created to be. It would be no surprise to Augustine, I think, that we do experience incredible separation and distance between men and women in our day, and that women especially experience

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inequality at several levels of society. This inequality manifesting in disordered relationships is not God-given—it is a result of communal sin that has become systemic. Thus, too, the first and greatest blessing and command of God bestowed to the first humans becomes, on Augustine’s view, the first and most degrading of all punishments humanity could receive. He says in book XI of The Literal Interpretation of Genesis that humans could not have generated children in the same way as in Eden, because now ‘‘death already conceived would whip up the disorderly behavior of disobedient members in the bodies of disobedient human beings.’’41 Because of disobedience, humanity is doomed to have bodies that no longer bear children in the blessed way God first ascribed. In On Marriage and Concupiscence (a later work, dating from about 419 or 420), he suggests further: ‘‘The union, then, of male and female for the purpose of procreation is the natural good of marriage. But he makes a bad use of this good who uses it bestially, so that his intention is on the gratification of lust instead of the desire of offspring.’’42 Many scholars including Paul Ramsey have seen the ‘‘disobedient members’’ of human bodies as human genitalia. To be sure, this is one of the meanings Augustine ascribes. As he says, Well, then, how significant is the fact that the eyes, and lips, and tongue, and hands, and feet, and the bending of back, and neck, and sides, are all placed within our power—to be applied to such operations as are suitable to them, when we have a body free from impediments and in a sound state of health, but when it must come to man’s great function of the procreation of children, the members which were expressly created for this purpose will not obey the direction of the will, but lust has to be waited for to set these members in motion, as if it had legal right over them, and sometimes it refuses to act when the mind wills, while often it acts against its will! Must not this bring the blush of shame over the freedom of the human will, that by its contempt of God, its own Commander, it has lost all proper command for itself over its own members?43 And yet, Augustine seems to have a much more broad sense of disorder and disobedience than would be restricted by sexual organs. For example, Augustine writes in his later work Continence, ‘‘because we are made up of both these two things [flesh and spirit], that at present oppose each other within us, we pray and work to bring them into harmony. We must not think that one of them is the enemy.’’44 From the later Augustine, it appears that even our


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bodies are divided against themselves, but that disorder is not located only or especially in our flesh. It shows itself in our societies and in our relationships with each other, as well as our bodies. If disorder is not the result of our flesh, then where does it come from? For Augustine, disorder is not the result of lustful desire (again, against Ramsey’s depiction) so much as the result of pride relating to disobedience. In The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, he suggests: ‘‘the soul at any rate that exalted itself and was excessively over-confident, for instance, in its own powers, had to be given a demonstration by experiencing punishment of precisely how not well a nature fares that has been made, if it draws away from the one that made it.’’45 In Continence he writes further, ‘‘We were not like that in Adam before nature disdained and offended its maker by listening to and following its seducer.’’46 Sin therefore came to the world from listening to others and then by suggesting that we knew better than God.47 Augustine’s story of the fall therefore parallels his concerns in his account of creation. Just as in our created nature, we were to be in communion with each other and with God by following God’s commandments, so in the fall we find we are outside communion with each other and are no longer able to follow God’s commandments because we have become cut off from each other. The issue for Augustine is therefore not sex but obedience, and lack of obedience to God has led to fundamental chaos and disorganization in our social lives. The ‘‘blow of sin’’ affects our sexual organs because we now no longer have control of those organs, and original sin is passed to children like a genetic trait. They receive, in Augustine’s words, ‘‘the disfigurement of lust.’’48 Before the fall, children would be born ‘‘neither to take the place of deceased parents nor to die themselves, until the earth was filled with immortal human parents; and that with a just and holy people being thus set in place such as we believe will exist after the resurrection, a final limit would also be put to the whole business of birth.’’49 Before the fall, all childbearing was part of God’s plan of salvation and even a mark of holiness. After the fall, the great tragedy is that children are now born, but not for the sake of eternal blessedness in God. The emphasis is placed much more on humanity’s need for children, which only serves to underscore the selfishness and pride of all humankind.50 Just as Augustine would not, I think, be surprised by the effects of the fall in gendered relationships in our day, neither would he be surprised at the ways in which bearing and raising near-perfect children has become a consuming passion for many, and an important subject for theologians. It fits with our fallen, and mistaken, desire for perfection and fulfillment, but which cannot be fulfilled outside our desire for God.

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Salvation: Relationships Redeemed Nonetheless, it is still the case that even the tragic situation incurred by the fall may lead to some good. As Augustine writes, ‘‘For God would never have created any, I do not say angel, but even man, whose future wickedness He foreknew, unless He had equally known to what uses in behalf of the good He could turn him, thus embellishing, the course of the ages, as it were an exquisite poem set off with antitheses.’’51 As Augustine will say in his separate treatise on predestination, we do not know who one of the elect is and who is not.52 Paul Ramsey is therefore also wrong to suggest that Augustine views sexuality that only the virgins have, as blessed, and that the end of time will arrive when everyone is a virgin. Augustine is not so assured about the end time and about who will see blessedness in God and who will not. The question, then, becomes how man and woman are to participate in God’s own life even in the face of our turning away from God. Here, there is great grace. God grants them, through grace, the means by which to continue obeying him and the command to be fruitful and multiply. To be fruitful and multiply and to have dominion over the earth in Eden requires both bearing children and working the earth, done in the presence of God; in the aftermath of the fall, these are done in shame because sin separates us from God, and we see that we have turned away from God.53 Before the fall, contends Augustine, such commands could have been fulfilled without the pain, suffering, and hard work that ensued after the fall. But God does grant them after the fall, though at a price. The problem then, contra Ramsey, is not solely sex or procreation but is with the reasons for sex and procreation in the first place: that human beings were first of all created to be in communion with God and to participate in his ordering of creation. Such participation happened originally when humans listened to God and lived out his commandments, before the fall. The marriage between Adam and Eve after the fall was still given the means by which to complete and obey these commands. On procreation, he says, ‘‘the child which is born is not the work of cohabitation but of God. He, indeed, who made the first man of the dust, fashions all men out of seed.’’54 Out of God’s grace, then, and not through sin, humans are still able to procreate. Furthermore, by God’s grace, men and women may even remain in relationship with each other, though in a hierarchical manner that reflects humanity’s position after the fall. Thus he writes, ‘‘It was God’s sentence . . . that gave this position to the man, and it was by her own fault that the woman deserved to have her husband as her lord, not by


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nature. Unless this is accepted and observed, however, nature will become even more distorted, and the fault will be aggravated.’’55 Marriage is for children, but the larger point, for Augustine, is that marriage (even the problematic postlapsarian hierarchical marriage) is a God-given means by which we can obey God, despite the fall. He suggests, as well, that by procreation is also meant that humankind becomes an ‘‘ornament’’ for the earth.’’ Generation, by whatever means it occurs (both pre- and postlapsarian means of generation) is a good thing. He says in IX.9, 14 that even those who do not lead virtuous lives, even those who commit evil, still provide beautiful adornment for the earth, by virtue of being human.56 Augustine compares the present era, when people are still able to marvel at the ‘‘ornament’’ that is humankind, with the time when Adam and Eve lived in Paradise. His point is against those (such as John Chrysostom) who think that sex with procreation was instituted by God only after the fall, as a means of mitigating the effects of sin. While Augustine is not willing to say that genital sex was necessarily the means of procreating in Paradise,57 he does nonetheless attribute some sort of necessity here to the presence of Eve and Adam in the garden, in concert with God. After the fall, obedience within a life of grace manifests most especially in the lives of the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets, as we shall see further in the next chapter. He writes concerning Abraham and the Jewish law of circumcision that here was a sign of justice and right living. Circumcision functioned like baptism for the Jewish people so that they could be free from original sin and be restored to a way of following God. ‘‘Ever since circumcision was instituted amongst the people of God, which was at that time the sign of the righteousness of faith, it availed also to signify the cleansing even in infants of the original and primitive sin.’’58 The ability to be in fellowship with God and to obey God has therefore been present even from the beginnings of the fall. At the time of the fall, God gave Adam and Eve the means by which to be faithful to his commandments; in the Hebrew people God graciously gives the means by which original sin is mitigated, even before the coming of Christ. Furthermore, at several points Augustine suggests that procreation was a means of obedience among the people of Israel because it was special participation in God’s plan of salvation. He writes, ‘‘At earlier times, before Christ became man, there was need to have descendants physically for a large nation, for it to be the bearer of prophecy.’’59 This beauty that is present in the mere day-to-day lives of humans is also part of God’s ordering in creation. Augustine’s view of even postlapsarian procreation is less a mechanistic view than an image of great splendor, reinforcing the

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relationships present in Genesis between God and human and between human and human. The scriptural narrative as Augustine has it thus far suggests that God wishes for humans generally to be in fellowship with each other and in communion with God’s own self, even in fallen condition, and that the means for fulfilling God’s wish are granted by grace in the postlapsarian world. Marriage is one means for following God.

Redemption and Beyond Happily, Augustine’s view of marriage does not end with his understanding of the state of marriage after the fall: women subject to men and humans desperately living out their punishments. Given Augustine’s insistence on the good of marriage, and his narration of marriage as integrally related to obedience to God, it is no surprise that we therefore see marriage in some sense fulfilled through Christ’s redemptive work. In fact, Christ’s redeeming work puts humankind on even better footing than it had in the Garden of Eden. In several places, for example, Augustine mentions that even had humanity managed to remain in Eden, there would still have been no perfect bliss because there would have been no certainty regarding whether or not people could possibly sin.60 This redemption occurs partially in this life and most fully at the eschaton. Redemption, as shorthand for the time Christ came into the world and also the time when Christ will come again and be ‘‘all in all,’’ is therefore not simply a restoration of what was lost in Paradise. It marks both the removal of the debt of sins incurred as a result of the fall and the removal even of the uncertainty about life that affected humanity before the fall that concerned whether we could, on our own, attain the great bliss promised by God. Redemption in Christ restores the possibility of theosis because it removes the blind spots caused by our great arrogance in Paradise. No longer do we see that we, on our own, can gain wisdom (via the tree of good and evil, or otherwise) but that the grace of God triumphs. This triumph is partially realized now, before Christ’s second coming, but will be fully realized someday. Augustine’s account of Christ’s redemption of humanity in reference to marriage follows his considerations of grace offered in Christ. There are four main points here: (1) marriage is a crutch for the weakhearted in the postresurrection world; (2) marriage is nevertheless also a highly regarded good so that Augustine is unwilling to make a definitive case against marriage in relation to the possibility of blessedness in God at the end times; (3) marriage, for Christians, takes on a sacramental character that it did not have before Christ; and (4) celibacy can, and perhaps even should, occur within marriage.61


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These points turn aside Ramsey’s consideration of marriage as belonging to the b.c. world but yet existing in the present time, even while we wait in eschatological hope for the time when there will be no more marriage and no more sex. First, Augustine sees that marriage is no longer wholly necessary in a world where Christ has paid the debts incurred by our original disobedience. Death is no longer a certainty, and the children that are the result of fear of death are therefore no longer necessary. There is, however, still procreation or, more precisely, generation, and this has therefore taken on a different character and is now linked with baptism, rather than with sex. As he says, Both married women of faith and virgins consecrated to God are Christ’s mothers spiritually, because with holy practices and with love they do the will of the Father, with a pure heart and good conscience and sincere faith (1 Tm 1:5). Those, however, who give birth physically in the married state do not give birth to Christ but to Adam, and therefore, because they know what they have given birth to, they hasten to have their children made members of Christ by being bathed in the sacraments. . . . Mothers, who give birth physically to children who are not Christians, cooperate in this holy child-bearing in order for them to become what they know they could not have been by physical birth.62 With Christ’s coming, a new understanding of family comes into play; Augustine cites Jesus’ question ‘‘Who is my mother and my brothers?’’ as the main text for seeing a shift in thought about what it means to be a family. The original family would have been blessed through procreation in that they could participate in God’s plan of salvation and, eventually, God’s own life, because their bodies would not have been divided upon themselves. After the fall, procreation is still offered as a blessing and as a way to participate in God’s life, but it is haunted by the specter of death. After Christ, participation in God’s plan of salvation is again possible without the specter of death, but this possibility takes on an even greater character in that no form of physical coitus is necessary to bring this about. Rather, he suggests: ‘‘What was [Christ] teaching us other than to value our spiritual family more highly than relationship by birth, and that what makes people blessed is not being close to upright and holy persons by blood relationship, but being united with them by obeying and imitating their doctrine and way of life.’’63 A second and related point, though, is that Augustine is entirely unwilling to make statements about whether or not those who are married are included in the present scheme of redemption and the future eschatological hope. That

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is, contrary to theologians such as Ramsey and even John Paul II, it is not entirely clear in reading Augustine that marriage is meant only for this age before the second coming of Christ. Certainly, Augustine places greater honor on the state of virginity, but marriage is not thereby left behind. The question is not one of which state will garner a place in eschatological fulfillment, but rather, which state will most readily help a person practice godly virtues that lead people toward union with God. Virginity is the state where this most easily occurs, according to Paul and the early church fathers, but both marriage and virginity can be states where practice of virtue occurs. Writing about Susanna in the book of the prophet Daniel 13, for example, Augustine notes: It is unthinkable that in Christ’s court the marriage bed will incur punishment for her, who chose to risk being put to death on a false charge of adultery rather than to be unfaithful to it. What was the point of those words, It is better for me to fall into your hands than to sin in the sight of God (Dn 13:23), if God was not going to save her because she preserved married chastity, but was going to condemn her because she had married. Whenever now the true words of holy scripture come to the support of married chastity against those who slander and make false accusations against marriage, Susanna is once again defended by the Holy Spirit.64 The point for Augustine is faithfulness to the vows that have been made, against Jerome and others who argued that virginity was the best, and indeed only, faithful state of life for Christian witness. That is, marriage has a sacramental character on Augustine’s view. This is not simply an academic point made from observing Augustine’s insistence on the famed three ends of marriage: proles, fides, and sacramentum. Not all marriages can claim these three ends; Christians in particular experience marriage as a sacrament. The quality of the marriage and the God-given nature of that marriage are, significantly, not dependent on having children but on the faithfulness of the couple to each other and to God. Augustine is explicit in his view that even where a marriage is contracted for the sake of bearing children, among Christians such a marriage remains valid and ineligible for divorce even when no children can come from the union and the man would rather seek a divorce.65 Just as observing and preserving consecrated virginity is an act of faithfulness, so too is being faithful to a marriage bond even in the case of divorce. Augustine holds that this is true even when two people want to marry only for the sake of having children; again he recalls to us that procreation, even at its most controlled in marriage, is not necessary for Christians.


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The grace given to the sacrament of marriage is that of unity, as he suggests in The Excellence of Marriage: Out of many souls, there will arise a city of people with a single soul and single heart turned to God. This perfection of our unity will come about after this pilgrimage, when no longer will anyone’s thoughts be hidden from another, and no longer will anyone be in conflict with anyone about anything. For this reason in our age the sacrament of marriage has been restored to being a union between one man and one woman.66 What is possible and, moreover, necessary, after Christ, is that we have been redeemed to be obedient and faithful to God, and therefore our relationships with each other have been restored. Our entire lives bear witness to that fact. In his later work written to Pollentius, Adulterous Marriages (written ca. 420), Augustine emphasizes that one is to be faithful to a marriage bond even in a case where one wishes to practice celibacy but the other spouse does not.67 In other words, celibacy is not the be-all and end-all Christian state of life. ‘‘Obedience is a greater perfection than celibacy.’’68 Augustine always seems to have in mind the original obedience and sharing in God’s own life that was possible at the creation, the disobedience that caused the fall and made obedience impossible except through grace, and then the possibility for obedience that was restored in Christ. Following this point, though, there are times when celibacy can and should be sought, in the context of marriage, and this is preferable to being married but being incontinent. He claims, ‘‘Nevertheless, married men and women who are celibate, because they have vowed their chastity to God, either by mutual agreement or after the death of their spouse, should realize that they have a greater reward due them than conjugal chastity can claim.’’69 The significance of this statement is that, on Augustine’s view, there are degrees of using or not using sex, and this relates more or less directly to the degree of obedience in ‘‘disobedient members’’ that has been restored, by grace, after Christ. Thus, a couple might begin married life unable to keep sexual ardor checked but might, over the course of a lifetime of witness, be able eventually to agree to be mutually celibate even within marriage. Augustine says, ‘‘As it is, however, in a good marriage, even with older people, although the passion of youth between man and woman has waned, the relationship of love between husband and wife continues strong, and the better persons they are, the earlier they begin by mutual consent to abstain from carnal union.’’70 Augustine cannot say that marriage does not exist in the post-resurrection world because the apostle Paul discusses marriage in the context of Christ and

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the church. He does not rely solely on virginity as a way to describe the effects of Christ’s resurrection leading to the eschaton. However, marriage does become reconfigured in ways that are not entirely clear from our vantage point. He writes in his Retractions that it is not possible to know exactly how marriage looks at the end times, given New Testament witness about marriage.71 Nonetheless, Augustine suspects that the reconfiguration of marriage at the eschaton has something to do with fully restored faithfulness and obedience to God, given to us because of the advent of Christ. Concerning the question of gender in light of redemption, we may observe that it remains the case that men and women still exist in sexed bodies after the resurrection and at the end times.72 In fact, Augustine explicitly speaks against the opinion that women shall rise as men, and thus find themselves in desexed bodies. At the end of The City of God, he argues: From the words, ‘‘Till we all come to a perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ,’’ and from the words, ‘‘Conformed to the image of the Son of God,’’ some conclude that women shall not rise women, but that all shall be men, because God made man only of earth and woman of the man. For my part, they seem to be wiser who make no doubt that both sexes shall rise. For there shall be no lust, which is now the cause of confusion. For before they sinned, the man and the woman were naked and were not ashamed. From those bodies, then, vice shall be withdrawn, while nature shall be preserved. And the sex of woman is not a vice, but nature. It shall then indeed be superior to carnal intercourse and child-bearing; nevertheless the female members shall remain adapted not to the old uses, but to a new beauty, which so far from provoking lust, now extinct, shall excite praise to the wisdom and clemency of God, who both made what was not and delivered from corruption what he made.73 Women and men remain in sexed bodies after the resurrection and, indeed, at the Parousia. Just as woman was created for the purpose of procreation (which was a means of obedience), Augustine here seems even to hint at the possibility of some kind of procreation in Paradise because the ‘‘sex of woman’’ will be adapted to a ‘‘new beauty’’ that is ‘‘superior to carnal intercourse.’’ Procreation, which at the time of creation had been a means of obedience to God, now gives way to new obedience and new praise, though again, Augustine is somewhat unsure what that looks like. What he is certain of, though, is that both men and women are redeemed and raised together, just as both participated in the fall together.


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As at the time of creation, relationships between men and women in the post-resurrection era at the ‘‘age of the fulness of Christ’’ experience no lust. Yet this ‘‘fulness of Christ’’ is also a different experience than was had in the garden, for now all our relationships are to be drawn up together in the Body of Christ so that Christ will fill all things. Men and women are still necessary to each other, and still require relationship with each other, though in a vastly different way. Thus, Augustine notes Jesus’ statement that men and women at the eschaton will no longer be married or given in marriage to each other. That old relationship, which ended up becoming mired in sin, has come to an end. Now men and women function in relationship with each other by reference to Christ, and the marriage between him and his bride, the church. Thus, as Augustine notes in the following chapter of The City of God, ‘‘What should hinder us from applying to the woman what is expressly said of the man, understanding both sexes to be included under the general term ‘man’? For certainly in the saying, ‘Blessed is he who fears the Lord,’ women also who fear the Lord are included.’’74 Augustine’s vision is one of unity between men and women, due to the work and grace of the one Mediator, Christ. He writes, ‘‘The woman, therefore, is a creature of God even as the man; but by her creation from man unity is commended; and the manner of her creation prefigured, as has been said, Christ and the church. He, then, who created both sexes will restore both.’’75 Post-resurrection Christian marriages in this world manifest some of the character of that future relationship because of the sacrament of marriage, which bestows unity that is not seen in non-Christian marriages. What Augustine therefore envisions, in these post-resurrection times, is that we are looking toward the time when the only marriage will be that between Christ and the church, and when all human relationships will be drawn together in that one body. Until that time, sacramental marriage is a sign on this earth of our gracious God restoring unity between men and women, which we lost at the fall. Augustine’s vision is therefore about the possibility of restoring two relationships—that between humanity and God, and that between humans. His view of marriage, in the context of salvation history, is quite different from the one that sees Augustine promoting only procreation because the human body is evil and disobedient, or that woman in particular is disobedient and must be curtailed. Rather, he consistently advocates for the unity of humanity with God. One of the marks of that is following God’s will, and its physical sign is indeed sex. But Augustine’s view of redemption is also that the marriage relationship is a figure of the restored relationship of all humanity. Christ has given that possibility of restoration to us.

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Conclusions The idea that marriage has been reconfigured with the advent of Christ has great bearing on what was said earlier about gender and procreation at creation. At creation, men and women were created to be obedient to God’s commands; at redemption, men and women are restored to the possibility of being obedient. At creation, however, I suggested that it was only via men and women together that they were able to be obedient. The question, then, is how and whether the male/ female relationship is affected or changed after Christ. I shall arrive at an answer to this question by way of contrast: first, I will briefly compare some of the salient points I have made about Augustine with the views of his contemporary John Chrysostom. Then, I consider more fully how present-day theologians have dealt with gender; I conclude by suggesting that Augustine gives us quite a good base from which to do fruitful work on gender concerns.

Augustine vis-a`-vis John Chrysostom In order to appreciate what Augustine’s vision of marriage offers to us theologically, it is good to set him in contrast with John Chrysostom. This is because several scholars, including Catherine P. Roth, see that Chrysostom offers more resources for marriage and equality between men and women than Augustine does.76 For example, Roth writes, ‘‘Between St Paul and the twentieth century, the best in Christian teaching on marriage is represented by St John Chrysostom.’’77 Chrysostom’s view is significant because he more specifically advocates equality between men and women in his texts and he speaks of a marriage relationship that is to be ‘‘transfigured by Christian love.’’78 Chrysostom’s focus is on the love of Christ and on the supernatural character of marriage in contrast to views that focus more completely on creation and procreation. On Roth’s account, Chrysostom’s high view of marriage lends itself more readily to a high view of equality between spouses because both partners are to imitate Christ, and she sees that Chrysostom provides feminist scholarship with the scholarship from ‘‘the tradition’’ that allows feminist scholars to advance points about human equality. On her view, the Western emphasis on procreation allowed Christian marriage to seem much more like a contract than a high, holy vision, in contrast to the Eastern view.79 There are similarities between Augustine and John Chrysostom. In the milieu of Jovinian and Jerome, who advocated for either one state or the other, both Augustine and Chrysostom proffer moderate views of marriage and virginity that allow for neither state to be vilified in the church. Among the many


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lines of reasoning that Augustine and Chrysostom (and numerous other church fathers, including Gregory of Nyssa) agree on concerning marriage and virginity is that marriage and virginity are both goods, but virginity is better. Marriage is therefore a crutch for those unable quite to live the holiest of holy lives; a life dedicated to virginity demonstrates greater strength of character and virtue. A key difference between Augustine and John Chrysostom, however, is that on the latter’s view, marriage was not present in our prelapsarian state. He says in On Virginity, ‘‘Do you perceive the origin of marriage? Why it seems to be necessary? It springs from disobedience, from a curse, from death. For where death is, there is marriage. When one does not exist, the other is not about. But virginity does not have this companion.’’80 Here, virginity is the natural state of human beings before the fall; marriage is a concession to our sinful humanity. For Chrysostom, the aim of marriage is simply to prevent sexual sin. Children are therefore not an appropriate end of marriage. Chrysostom’s contention is that God may nonsexually create other human beings, with or without us.81 Contrary to Augustine’s view on procreation as the reason for woman being a helper to man, which leads inexorably to relationships, John Chrysostom suggests that woman’s creation as a ‘‘help’’ for man comes in the spiritual virtues she practices for herself, thereby allowing men to be more free for spiritual devotion to God. As he says, ‘‘For a woman [at this point in time, after the resurrection] is capable only of being of service in the least important matters: if someone were to introduce her as an associate in the most important matters, not only would she be of no help, she would even enmesh him in cares.’’82 So, within an earthly marital relationship, Chrysostom advocates equality between men and women, but his theology of salvation history indicates that such equality is of only limited value. Chrysostom’s understanding of creation with respect to marriage and virginity relates directly to his views on redemption and the union we may have with God. On Chrysostom’s view, Christ’s entire life shows how humans are redeemed. Virginity is therefore the prefigurement of the kingdom of God on earth. True virgins (that is, those who are not defiled by heretical thinking) may enjoy a taste of heaven even in this life. The present time is not for marriage because, as Chrysostom says in On Virginity, ‘‘the resurrection stands at our door . . . the young girl, so long as she remains at home with her mother, is occupied with childish cares.’’83 Christ came to earth not only to redeem sinful humanity through his death and resurrection; in addition, his uniquely virgin birth shows us a better way to God. As with Augustine, marriage is no longer necessary for the Christian, but on Chrysostom’s view it is most definitely not preferable because it is a reminder of the results of the fall. Those who are baptized should not endeavor to seek marriage but instead seek the more

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perfect form of life available in virginity. This is what Paul means, insists Chrysostom, when he says that we should remain in the state in which we were called. Christ (and Mary) are the models for virginity we should follow; in his virginity as in everything else that Christ did for us, he shows us the way to God and the way to a life that restores our pre-fallen condition. The theological import of suggesting that marriage was created in Paradise, as opposed to John Chrysostom’s view, means that the good of marriage cannot be separated from the relationship in which it resides. Chrysostom’s view tends toward a more individualistic stance on the Christian life, one that focuses on the spiritual journey and growth of the individual but is more negative about the people with whom one resides. Because marriage was not a pre-fallen good, it is not restored; what is restored is our original state as virginal people. Chrysostom’s view is thus restrictive: serious Christians should not have marriages or families, and so the serious Christian (man) cannot postulate truly good relationships with women. Marriage can be helpful but not a real way to have life with God. Instead, each Christian is looking out for his or her own welfare at the potential expense of others. The view of marriage as a good that comes about only after the fall supports continued distance between men and women. For Augustine, however, precisely what is restored is relationship, not simply the marriage relationship between men and women but relationships not tied by blood but by baptism. Augustine’s vision of marriage and family is infinitely expansive and intricately related; in his view, there is the possibility for right relationship between many people. Against Chrysostom’s view, Augustine’s offers a better theological vision because it makes better sense of the scriptures about marriage and virginity (that Jesus speaks against divorce, for example, and that Paul does not condemn marriage, even while saying that virginity is a better state), as well as providing for an ecclesiology that makes sense of Paul’s many-membered Body of Christ, in which the married and the virgins can both be members. Concerning the problem and question of gender, Augustine’s view of restored relationships gets to the heart of the difficulty about patriarchy, seeing that problems as well as blessings can be found precisely in the relationships between men and women, whereas Chrysostom’s view allows questions about gender to remain embedded in a patriarchal and individualistic worldview.

Contemporary Gender Problems Much contemporary theology on marriage finds itself more in accord with John Chrysostom than with Augustine of Hippo. For instance, Paul Ramsey’s


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considerations of marriage and sexuality treat marriage as an entirely outdated institution that humanity is (hopefully) stripping off as we all move toward the end times. Ramsey’s move on this point serves to make sexuality an individual’s enterprise. As well, Sarah Coakley’s and Graham Ward’s recent articles and essays deal with difficulties about gender by actually sidestepping the issues that are often connected to men’s and women’s relationships. Both often seem to suggest that the way to deal with gender difficulties is to imagine how, theologically speaking, gender no longer makes any difference. It is not clear, however, that making gender a ‘‘nonissue’’ in this way is truly redemptive or, as I suspect is the case, is ignoring the elephant in the room. Coakley, for instance, uses Gregory of Nyssa to suggest that, eschatologically speaking, our bodies will be able to transcend our particular gender in this age because we shall take on the characteristics of the other gender. Her version of theosis therefore involves that we become both male and female and reach blessedness in God.84 Graham Ward, too, suggests that Christ himself transcends gendered bodies by the very fact that in the resurrection and the ascension, his body becomes something different from, and much greater than, the male Jewish Jesus who was born in Bethlehem and who died in Calvary.85 Browning’s vision of a stable, equal-regard family is perhaps just one more way to put aside gender because the images that come to mind are of two entirely equal robotlike beings, able to effect stability in the ‘‘relationship’’ that they have. It is not a vision that adequately takes into account created human nature. A more beneficial view for women and men who wish to work against patriarchal structures and inequalities between men and women may be in fact to see that it is our gendered bodies that have been created and have also been redeemed; gender is no mere construct in theological terms. We are created to be in right relationship to God, first and foremost, and then to each other. One of the main discussions continuing in theological debate has been precisely the question of gender and our relation to it. Some scholars try to opt out of being gendered persons, yet the question of whether gender is part of human nature has a profound effect on the rest of one’s theology, including considerations of creation, redemption, and the eschaton. This view is not essentialism with a theological bent; that is, I am not saying that our sexed bodies have innate characteristics that lead to particular roles (especially roles that perpetuate a patriarchal view of society). Rather, our created bodies, male and female, were created to be in communion and fellowship with each other. This means looking less at the roles we play and more at the ways in which we help each other live virtuous lives while striving toward God. The importance of seeing that it is our gendered and sexed bodies, as men and women, which are redeemed in Christ is also to see what the purpose of

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marriage was at creation and to see it fulfilled in greater glory with the coming of Christ. Developing specific gendered roles is not the end result of my meditation on Augustine in this chapter. Indeed, I think that any attempt to define roles for genders overly objectifies a specific gender in place of the relationship. The idea of complementarity is helpful inasmuch as it recognizes the interchange of human relationships in relation to God and in pursuit of humanity’s final end in God, but is unhelpful to the extent that it tries narrowly to construe precisely how those relationships must proceed, most especially along the lines of traditional male/female gender roles. There are points where Augustine’s understanding of marriage will seem unhelpful in the current era, given his stance on divorce, remarriage, sex, and childbearing. At the same time, it is important to see that these ‘‘ethical issues’’ may not, in Augustine’s terms, be separated from the theological account of creation, fall, and redemption that he has to tell. Nor can they be separated from our own accounts of creation, fall, and redemption. Ramsey is correct, in a sense: sexuality is, indeed, part of the means by which God tells the story of redemption, but if we take Augustine seriously, God is telling that story in a much more complex and compelling way. Marriage is as much a part of the whole account of who humanity is, from creation to the present day. Marriage is a way of naming what it means to be human, which is to be in relationship with others and with God. It can no longer be limited to a ‘‘natural law’’ point of view focused on created nature but must instead be broadened to consider that perhaps even single people participate in ‘‘marriage’’ in some way. Thus, we must now also turn to Augustine’s account of virginity and other states of singleness. These states, too, will offer ways to describe what it means to be human. Ultimately I suggest, by the end of chapter 4, that being human requires being both married and single. Virginity and other states of singleness shall be seen as inseparable from salvation history and also as inseparable from marriage. My contention throughout this section has been that, against scholars who view Augustine’s descriptions of marriage as hopelessly pessimistic and patriarchal, his discussion of marriage within salvation history as a whole demonstrates a high view of marriage that requires both male and female to be in relationship with each other and with God. In the next chapter, I shall more fully address singleness, considering how it, too, has functioned throughout salvation history and what this means for Christians.

4 Neither Married nor Given in Marriage Singleness and Salvation History

What I suggested in the previous chapter is that marriage has been part of the story of God’s working in humanity since our creation. Marriage is not limited to creation but figures significantly in other parts of salvation history, and hence in God’s gracious action in our lives. By means of marriage and procreation, we learn to be in relationship with God and with each other; here there are obvious links to the great commandments to love God and neighbor. However, the picture of Christian households is incomplete if we do not consider singleness, partly because considering singleness is recognition that households do not bear identical character to each other; the baptized are not all married with children, nor does it appear that marriage and family should be the main emphasis for Christians.1 We theologians and ethicists cannot rightly understand marriage and family without trying to understanding singleness as well. The reason is because we all are bound together in the one Household of God, and that has bearing on our many households, and it is this connection that I shall demonstrate in the present chapter. Singleness as a concept shows us some of the diversity that households can take, and it prevents us from having too restricted a view of households. At the same time, considering singleness makes us realize the importance and singularity of God’s grace, as well as the importance of cultivating a life of virtue. Studying states of singleness therefore impacts greatly on both theology and metaethics, especially when viewed from Augustine’s vantage point.

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‘‘Single’’ is, ironically, a complex word; it often connotes separate individuals, as in ‘‘every single child.’’ It can sometimes even describe two people, as in ‘‘single combat.’’ In households and living situations, it is used to describe various states of not being married; this description itself is inadequate, for ‘‘single’’ encompasses so many more complex situations than simple lack of marriage can describe. Those whose spouses have died are technically single, for example; so are people who have never married; small children are single; so are divorced parents, in the common way of thinking. More complex instances come to mind: are engaged people single? They are not quite married, but they are not quite single in the common use of the word. Questions about gay marriages and civil unions press ‘‘single’’ as a term even further: one is not legally married, and yet one is not quite single as in ‘‘free to be hooked up or even married someday.’’ Could it even be the case, among married people, that one finds oneself sometimes living as a single person without the benefit of spousal input, because of illness, vast disagreement about a particular area of life (for example, when one spouse is a very dedicated Christian and another is nominally so), and comparable situations? Like many words, then, ‘‘single’’ is not precise, or even an appropriately descriptive word on the whole; it is loosely applied for many people. Many unmarried singles will say, ‘‘I do not know how to be single well; clearly we humans are made to be married instead.’’ I think it is no mistake that just as we do not know how to use the word ‘‘single’’ well and descriptively, so there is confusion about how to live a good life as a ‘‘single’’ person. Culturally, we have descriptions in mind of what it means to say that two people are married, and we have some common senses of what a good marriage is;2 otherwise, Don Browning’s think tank on how to fix marriage to be a ‘‘stable, equal regard’’ institution could not have any traffic. We think we know what marriage is, so we can see where the problems are and try to fix them. There is no similar think tank for fixing ‘‘singlehood,’’ unless we want to say that online dating services can suffice as such a think tank. (After all, a dating service fixes the state of ‘‘singleness’’ to a state of ‘‘marriage,’’ or at least, to a state of ‘‘being with someone else in a semimarried type of relationship.) To be ‘‘single,’’ about which we know little or nothing, is to be in the absence of ‘‘marriage,’’ about which we think we know much. When we use the word ‘‘single,’’ we are plunged into a vast field of chaotic descriptions; singleness has little moral significance except by way of contrast to marriage. Indeed, in the contemporary era we know this: singleness appears as the free state of life, where one may have sex with abandonment, spend $400 on a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes with no concern for how that money may be better spent, and drink oneself to oblivion. So Sex and the City and

neither married nor given in marriage

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Bridget Jones tell us.3 Mountains of books have been written on sexual ethics in relation to marriage: contraception, homosexuality, and the point that one should not have sex until marriage. Much has been written, too, on the ‘‘ethics’’ of parenting and of being fiscally responsible in marriage. As I suggested in the first chapter, though, little has been written about the moral life of the single person in recent years, though some have tried.4 Such is the state of ‘‘singleness’’ in contemporary culture. The question arises, however, whether singleness can exist, as such, for Christians, for the church has used stronger descriptive words to discuss what it is to be unmarried in its past: ‘‘virginity,’’ ‘‘celibacy,’’ ‘‘monasticism,’’ and ‘‘holy widow.’’ The question is not about the origins of these various states, because widows, virgins, and celibates were known before Christianity, but rather it is a question of emphasis and how Christians best live out these states of singleness.5 With the possible exception of monasticism, all these states of life were known to the Jewish people well before the time of Christ. A widow in Israelite society was recognized as someone on the fringes; hence, the injunctions to care for widows and orphans in Exodus 22. The Essenes were an early Jewish sect that generally frowned upon marriage and preferred to live lives of celibacy, but these people, too, lived on the fringes of society. Virginity was prized as a physical state from which one should enter into marriage, rather than a permanent state of life.6 Augustine and many of his contemporaries, on the other hand, find it necessary to determine whether and how people ought to live in an unmarried state; thus they write entire treatises for unmarried people on the best ways to live well. As we saw in the last chapter concerning the debates between Jerome and Jovinian, many fourth- and fifth-century scholars took part in debates about the status of virginity (in particular) in the early church because the question at stake was precisely one of discipleship. Jovinian wrote, for example, that ‘‘our religion has devised a new dogma against nature’’ which is the ascetic life of virginity.7 For Jovinian, any emphasis on virginity as an exalted state of life was misguided because peoples’ merits before God could not, on his view, be based on their physical states of life. For other church fathers, however, an emphasis on virginity was entirely necessary for Christians. In part, this was because of Paul’s admonitions in his first letter to the Corinthians and also because of the examples of Mary and Jesus as the quintessential virgins. Indeed, even the church itself is virginal by some accounts. Augustine took all these considerations further by writing about a multiplicity of single states of life: virginity, which was the most exalted state of life, monasticism, as something of a subset of virginity, and widowhood, as a state of life somewhere between marriage and virginity. His task was to argue that a life apart from

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marriage should no longer be considered life on the fringes, but rather the main state of life for Christians. The early fathers tried to push asceticism to the forefront by using various rhetorical devices.8 As we saw in chapter 3, John Chrysostom did so by maintaining that virginity was the original state of being for humankind and the one to which all humans would return, a version of history he shared with Gregory of Nyssa.9 As we shall see later, for Augustine, however, virginity as a discrete state of life was not the original state of being. Instead, he shows how the many possible single states of life are threaded throughout salvation history, just as marriage is threaded through salvation history. The rhetorical effect of Augustine’s move is not only to proffer a middle way between Jovinian’s and Jerome’s more extreme arguments for and against marriage or virginity; it is also to promote a vision of the church in which marriage and the various Christian states of singleness can and should be lived well for the greater glory of God. (I will discuss this point more fully in the next section, when I discuss eschatology, households and liturgy.) Augustine manages, in brilliant fashion, to concede both Jerome’s point that virginity is the more exalted state, and Jovinian’s point that one’s earthly state of life is not wholly the means toward the ultimate state of blessedness.10 One popular way to tell the Christian story about marriage and singleness over time is to say that in the early and medieval church, virginity and its accompanying vowed state of life in monasticism were much more highly respected than marriage to the point that marriage was much maligned. Since the Reformation and Martin Luther’s insistence on marriage as a natural, earthy, and beneficial foundation, virginity has fallen out of favor and, indeed, has become almost nonsensical.11 From a Protestant perspective, an overemphasis on virginity makes the Christian life appear to be based on merit rather than on faith and grace because the better Christians are the ones who are able to be continent.12 Since Vatican II and the document Gaudium et Spes, Catholics, too, have become much more inclined to write about marriage and family while paying less attention to or even maligning single states of life, especially the celibate priesthood.13 While Catholic theology has not wholly turned aside considerations of celibacy, the thrust of the conversation moves toward marriage.14 One might even go so far as to say that, in the common understanding, celibacy as a state of life has been found wanting and that the best state of life for happiness consists in marriage,15 or, at least, the semblance of marriage,16 an astonishing conclusion to juxtapose with the oft-cited monumental rise in divorces since the 1960s.17 The relative lack of discussion about virginity, monasticism, widowhood, and the like in contemporary culture, especially when compared with the


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burgeoning literature, think tanks, and focus groups devoted to promoting successful marriages, only serves to put these states of life in greater relief. They appear distant from each other; too distant almost to be considered even subset states of life within the state of life called Christian discipleship. An example of this is seen in the recent fervor over clergy sexual abuse and resultant questions about the celibate priesthood. In this latter case, the call has not been toward ‘‘fixing’’ celibate states of life along the same lines as ‘‘fixing’’ marriage, but has instead been about abolishing a celibate priesthood entirely. Clerical celibacy and other forms of celibacy like that of the monks and even that of unmarried, unvowed people have been called into question as even a remote, healthy possibility for humans. It is time to consider this problem more intently, especially at this time when marriage intoxicates cultural imagination on a number of levels. Is it any surprise, indeed, that people who are single might be pining for a relationship, any relationship however problematic, in an oversexed and overmarried culture? Yet, for Paul, for Augustine, and for many other church fathers and mothers, marriage was not meant to be the consummate state of life for Christians. Undue focus on marriage and a problematic focus on singles as a deviant group distract from engagement with moral questions about how Christians ought to live life well. The arguments between Jovinian and Jerome are not so far removed from the twenty-first century, only now it is marriage, rather than virginity, that receives a higher place in conversation. In this time of particular crisis about marriage and family, it is good to reflect on the scriptural evidence and centuries of historical support for unmarried states. That is, in having a singular focus on marriage, what is gained and what is lost for Christians? On my view, Augustine helps in considering this question, in part because he does not see virginity or celibacy as Edenic ideals in the way that other church fathers did, but also because perhaps he can provide a nuanced way between contemporary Jovinians and Jeromes, as he did in the fifth century. In this chapter, I discuss Augustine’s descriptions of many unmarried states (virginity, divorce, monasticism as a case of virginity, and widowhood) in relation to creation, the fall, and redemption. My aim is to show that for Augustine, the various single states of life are integral to the story of salvation just as marriage is, for two reasons. First, against Ramsey’s characterization of Augustine’s salvation history in the last chapter in which virginity clearly reigned supreme only after the resurrection and especially at the eschaton, Augustine develops thoughts on virginity throughout his narrative of salvation history. This leads him to see many and varied single states of life as parts of the whole of Christian life.

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Second, as we saw with marriage and its reconfiguring of relationships in light of Christ in the last chapter, the single states of life show how relationships with God and people become reconfigured, such that Christians cannot think that any one state of life has the ultimate priority over another in terms of relationship with God (though Augustine will consistently say that a single life of chastity will consistently produce more joy, both on earth and in the world to come). Marriage and the single states of life do not become identical or equivalent to each other, but they do become intertwined, showing how faithful Christians might live a life of virtue toward the end in God. Furthermore, Augustine sees that virginity, as the highest state of singleness, is made present, directly or indirectly by means of reference, throughout salvation history.18 Because single states are not ideals from the past or utopian models toward which we should strive in the present, but are presented as a way of life alongside marriage, ultimately Augustine’s vision of states of singleness is descriptive of the whole church and its life of holiness, just as marriage is. What this suggests for the primary question I raised in the first chapter is that our small households, which relate to our states of life, are connected to each other in the church. As we shall see in the next part, then, Augustine’s vision culminates in an eschatological vision especially of the church as the Household, but we can see this eschatological vision only if we see first that all these states of life inhere together historically.19

Creation and Holy Virginity? Virginity, which I consider as one of many states of singleness for reasons I shall detail later, figures prominently in Augustine’s account of redemption and eschatology. Indeed, some, such as Paul Ramsey, have suggested that in Augustine’s conception, virginity is the state toward which all of humanity tends in the post-resurrection world. It might seem odd, at first thought, to conceive of virginity with respect to the creation of humanity because it is much more common to think of marriage in relation to the creation of Adam and Eve. As I have already noted, however, for some of Augustine’s near contemporaries, virginity was the status quo at the creation of humankind. John Chrysostom writes: At that time there were no cities, crafts, or houses—since you care so very much for these things—they did not exist. Nevertheless, nothing either thwarted or hindered that happy life, which was far better than this. But when they did not obey God and became


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earth and dust, they destroyed along with that blessed way of life the beauty of virginity, which together with God abandoned them and withdrew.20 The blessed way of life that existed in the beginning, for Chrysostom, included both communion with God and a life filled with the beauty of virginity. Cities, and crafts, and houses, as the things that result from marriage and connect all of human society, have no purchase in Eden. Marriage is bondage; it is a concession to us in our fallen condition, but virginity makes us free.21 On Augustine’s view, the distinction between marriage and virginity was not quite so clear-cut. To be sure, as stated in chapter 3, marriage existed at the time of creation, and it was already created with a certain intention by its maker. Procreation of a sort would have been required both before and after the fall, as a means of obeying God’s commandment to humankind. Virginity, as freedom from the necessity to procreate in order to obey God, only becomes possible after the resurrection. So it seems that for Augustine, there is no sense that virginity need exist until Christ, the archetypal virgin, comes to earth. He comments, It is true that faithful and religious virginity now earns the great reward of being greatly honored by God; but that is only because in this present time to refrain from embracing (Eccl. 3:5), when the abundant supply of people from all nations is amply sufficient for filling up the number of the saints, the lust for indulging sordid pleasure cannot claim for itself what the necessity of supplying offspring no longer requires.22 In this passage, the time after Christ marks a time when enough people have been born to generate the saints of God, and marriage with its procreative functions is no longer necessary. This is the reading of Augustine that Paul Ramsey relies on, as I mentioned in the previous chapter. Yet there are nuances to his view because of references made to virginity as a state of life at creation, and this has to do with Augustine’s understanding of what virginity means. At creation, marriage does not necessarily entail sex, at least not lustful sex, and in Augustine’s opinion, Adam and Eve did not do the deed before the fall. Virginity (at least physical virginity whereby the body has not experienced sexual encounters)23 does entail keeping one’s body pure by not having sex. Augustine considers the possibility that Adam and Eve could have therefore obeyed God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, while yet remaining in something of a virginal state. He says: Was it then that if they had not sinned, they were destined to have children in some other way, without physical union, as a favor from

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intertwining households the all-powerful Creator? He was able to produce the first human beings without parents, and was able to form Christ’s flesh in the womb of a virgin, and (to address myself even to the unbelievers) he was able to give offspring to the bees without any sexual union.24

Augustine is not quite sure whether this would have been the case for Adam and Eve; he goes on from this point to consider ‘‘mystical’’ and ‘‘spiritual’’ ways to understand God’s command,25 but ultimately he suggests that ‘‘[to] investigate and discuss which of these opinions is the true one, or whether even one or more other opinions can be carved out of those words, would take a long time.’’26 There is also, of course, no way one could know this with finality. The point to observe is that for Augustine, it is at least thinkable to be both married and a virgin, because he notes instances where procreation occurs without sex. Perhaps Adam and Eve, and all the rest of creation, might have attained such status had the fall not occurred. The first couple occupies a curious open space in the question of marriage and virginity, because the two stand at the point of possibility when humans are able to be in relationship with each other while not being overcome by lustful, genitally disordered desire. Furthermore, and in direct contrast to John Chrysostom, Augustine writes that sexual activity could have existed in Paradise: But he who says that there should have been neither copulation nor generation but for sin, virtually says that man’s sin was necessary to complete the number of the saints. . . . [We] must rather believe that the number of the saints fit to complete this most blessed city would have been as great though no one had sinned, as it is now that the grace of God gathers its citizens out of the multitude of sinners.27 For Augustine, the possibility of procreation before the fall, whether by coitus or by some other means, was not threatening to his vision of God’s grace and God’s action in the world. Augustine sees that sex was unnecessary in Eden, but he does not therefore see that sex necessarily need not have existed. God, ultimately, would grant whatever blessings God chose, by whatever means God wished. In his trio of writings on Genesis, Augustine makes some direct references to virginity and its possibility at creation. In On Genesis against the Manichees, he observes, But that Adam and his wife were naked and not embarrassed signifies simplicity of soul and chastity. This you see is what the apostle too has to say: I attached you to one man, to present you to Christ as a chaste virgin; but I am afraid that just as the serpent deceived Eve with his


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slyness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity and chastity which is in Christ. (2 Cor. 11:2–3)28 In this earlier-written, so-called nonliteral, interpretation of Genesis, Augustine makes use of the theological idea of recapitulation so that Adam and Eve in their original state are much like Christians are in the post-resurrection era. Virginity is possible even in the married state. In his later work The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, Augustine is somewhat more certain that in Paradise, Adam and Eve could have physically had sexual union, but he continues with the theme of Adam and Eve in their origins as people ‘‘without spot or wrinkle (Eph 5:27) in Paradise, God granting this right to them if they lived faithfully in justice and served him obediently in holiness, so that without any restless fever of lust, without any labor and pain in childbirth, offspring would be brought forth from their sowing.’’29 It is noteworthy that Augustine quotes from Paul’s letter here, because of that letter’s reference to baptism and that life that Christians are to live. Virginity as a state of life is more often named as the state that allows one to live without spot or wrinkle,30 but Augustine plays with this distinction, by suggesting that nonvirgins too may live without spot or wrinkle. Moreover, if this kind of nonlustful physical union had been the case, it is significant that there would have been no need for virginity as a state of life, but this itself is an indication of Augustine’s ambiguity on the matter. To return to the quote that I noted earlier in reference to the idea that virginity exists only after Christ comes: ‘‘It is true that faithful and religious virginity now earns the great reward of being greatly honored by God; but that is only because in this present time to refrain from embracing (Eccl. 3:5), when the abundant supply of people from all nations is amply sufficient for filling up the number of the saints, the lust for indulging sordid pleasure cannot claim for itself what the necessity of supplying offspring no longer requires.’’31 If virginity is possible in today’s post-resurrection world, it is partly because virginity as we know it today has only vague connections to the kind of chastity that existed in Eden. A sexual union in Paradise would have looked nothing like the sexual union we know today; moreover, because it would have been without ‘‘spot or blemish,’’ there would be little need for physical virginity. The pre-fallen state of marriage therefore looks much like the post-resurrection state of virginity: both states involve faithfulness to God and detachment from lust as a means of being faithful. Here again, Adam and Eve occupy an open (and still slightly uneasy) space in the question about marriage and virginity at creation, because marriage as Augustine imagines it could have been has much affinity with his contemporary understanding of virginity, at its best.

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In a still later work, Continence, which is notably addressed to both virgins and married people, Augustine argues that we were not incontinent before the fall, when Adam was obedient to God.32 Adam serves here to give a sharp contrast between an age of innocence at creation, the condition of humanity after the fall, and even its condition at present. Both the married and the virgins are still yet subject to incontinence and lust; virginity is perhaps as close as possible as we can attain to our original created state, but it is neither the final picture nor even the original picture of what humanity looks like. In sifting through Augustine’s views on marriage, virginity, and sex at creation, it becomes abundantly clear that he is never quite able to make a determination about what it means to be humans in relationship at our origins, except to say that what we know now about marriage and virginity is not the fullness of what we would have known then. It is perhaps similar to what Henri de Lubac writes about Augustine’s views on grace and nature: ‘‘We should understand that everything which [Augustine] states concerning man in a state of innocence is affirmed by contrast; it is as it were a second phase of his thought, arranged schematically on occasion and simplified.’’33 Given this, it is well to remember that the contrast of which Augustine speaks does not admit a dichotomy such that marriage in the original state is wholly unrecognizable from the present reality. In The City of God, Augustine says this explicitly when he writes, ‘‘But now, men being ignorant of the blessedness of Paradise, suppose that children could not have been begotten there in any other way than they know them to be begotten now, i.e. by lust, at which even honourable marriage blushes.’’34 The same is true of virginity: Adam and Eve in their origins have some affinity with the state of virginity as it is today, even though we cannot entirely know what they were like.

The Fall: Some Brief Comments The fall is therefore important in considering virginity only insofar as it highlights what we do not know about any state of life, because we do not have much access to what life was like before the fall, except by contrast. Earlier, we saw that the fall had bearing on marriage as a state of life because it highlighted God’s gracious response to humanity by allowing the divine command to be obeyed. Grace imbues the relationship that we see in marriage, in creation as well as in the fall and redemption; there are natural ends that entail a response to God, given because of God’s grace. For Christians, there are also supernatural ends in the sacramental character of marriage, bestowed by God to


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raise marriage from its fallen condition. Marriage after the fall comes across as a gift, in spite of our turning away from God. The state of virginity, however, bears the burden of witnessing only the negative effects of the fall. We literally cannot return to a preconcupiscent world in which a desire only for God, even in the midst of the human relationship between Adam and Eve, is possible. The key point is ‘‘desire only for God.’’ In the post-resurrection world, God can become a virgin’s sole focus, but in a fallen world, this is impossible.35 The reason is because, as Kari Elisabeth Børresen points out,36 the fall has to do with the vice of pride, we humans thinking that we can be self-sufficient and can make our own judgments, over against divine judgment. Augustine writes starkly about the moment when ‘‘their eyes were opened and they realized that they were naked (Gen. 3:7).’’ Bold, shameless curiosity, you see, was moved to transgress the commandment, being greedy for fresh experiences, such as seeing what precisely would follow on touching the forbidden object, and thoroughly enjoying the guilty liberty of snapping the reins of the prohibition; so they reckoned it was highly unlikely that the death they feared would be the result, we must assume . . . that the apple on the tree was the same kind as the apples they had already found to be harmless on other trees, and preferred to believe that God could easily forgive sinners, rather than to put up patiently with never finding out what precisely the result would be.37 Two points are notable. First is Augustine’s sense that the apple Eve ate, the one the serpent offered her, is not different (in terms of species or kind) than other apples that Adam and Eve had already eaten. Thus, Augustine emphasizes it is not the quality of the fruit itself that causes harm but the careless and easy manner in which Eve disobeyed one of God’s commandments.38 Had she obeyed, her ability to be in communion with God would still have been intact. The second, related point is Augustine’s picture of what a better action would have been, namely, having the patience to seek out God directly and ask about the commandment rather than relying on the serpent’s telling. Augustine’s account of the fall does not include a picture of God withholding knowledge from Adam and Eve, as is often supposed by the commandment God gives Adam in verse 17, that they must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Rather, in their pride and focus on self, Adam and Eve refuse even to ask God about the rule (Eve when she first encounters the serpent and Adam when he eats what Eve has given); Augustine’s

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assumption is that God would have shared this reasoning and knowledge with them, because they were made for perfect communion with God. Before they ever encounter the serpent, Adam and Eve already see God as someone who does not give, who is not gracious, who does not seek relationship, but who withholds food and knowledge from them. They see themselves as people who can, and perhaps should, turn away from God partly because they ‘‘preferred to believe that God could easily forgive sinners.’’ Therefore, their eyes are opened and drawn toward their nakedness in a particular way: they have unlooked-for sexual urges for the first time, but moreover Augustine’s description here is that their eyes are turned on themselves.39 They see their nakedness and become obsessed with it for themselves to the point that they do not see God as the gracious giver, nor do they properly see each other in relationship. Pride is the singular problem. Augustine returns to this point again and again. In The City of God, he suggests: Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they were secretly corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil will preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? . . . And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself.40 The effects of this selfishness and inward focus, rather than focus on God, were mortality and loss of will, especially with respect to genitals.41 Thus it is the case for Augustine that the remedy for this sin of pride is the restoration of the possibility of obedience to God, in both marriage and virginity. We saw the priority of obedience to God’s will in the earlier section; it is also unsurprising that Augustine spends the bulk of his treatise on virginity discussing the virtue of humility against the vice of pride. To virgins, he counsels: ‘‘I know how honorable your virginity is; I do not ask you to imitate the tax collector humbly accusing himself of his sins, but I worry that you may imitate the Pharisee proudly boasting of his merits.’’42 Pride, as turning in toward one’s own desires, has the power, as he sees it, to return even the most holy virgins to a fallen, sinful state.43 Thus he writes, ‘‘We can consider that many men and women maintain virginal chastity but still do not do what the Lord says: If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me (Mt. 19:21).’’44 Because of the sin of pride and humanity’s turning away from God at the fall, the loss of even the possibility of a virginlike state in which people are able to devote themselves entirely to God functions as a physical sign of the great


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gap between the time of creation and the time of the fallen world. Virginity could perhaps be called an antisacrament because there is no grace seen and no union with God possible.

Israel and the Call to Faithfulness God steps into this breach, however, even before the incarnation and the resurrection are made known to humans. Augustine’s description of salvation history describes God’s grace-filled actions toward humans, so there is little or no break between the Old Testament and the New Testament in terms of God’s ultimate revelation. That is to say, Augustine views the Old Testament stories through a post-resurrection lens; consequently, he offers sometimes quite suggestive comments about the state of virginity in Israel. As with the earlier considerations of creation, it seems odd to think of virginity or other states of singleness in connection with the story of Israel. Israel’s story is rife with polygamists, adulterers, and prostitutes, to name a few. Moreover, Israel had a mandate from God to bear children and, thus, to be married. As Augustine writes, ‘‘In order for that people to be propagated the law decreed that anyone who did not sow seed for the growth of Israel was accursed.’’45 Polygamy was therefore acceptable and even encouraged. ‘‘That the reason for this was not the desires of the flesh but the need to provide descendants is clear from the fact that, although holy men were allowed to have several wives at one time, holy women were not allowed also to have union with more than one husband. That would not have made them more fertile, and the more they hungered for it, the more debased they would have been.’’46 Where contemporary scholars might be prone to see in Israel’s polygamy evidence of people who do not quite yet know or follow God’s law of monogamy and marital faithfulness, Augustine sees in it signs of Israel’s obedience, and therefore, holiness.47 He also uses the example of Israel to make a case about the intertwining of continence and holiness in the time after Christ. One strong example is found in Augustine’s descriptions of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham remarried and had many children, but Isaac had only twins and was content with them. Against those who therefore suggest that Isaac was better than Abraham because he did not remarry, Augustine writes: So that we must understand how chastely Abraham acted, because imprudent men, who seek some support for their own wickedness in the Holy Scriptures, think he acted through lust. We may also learn this, not to compare men by single good things. . . . And thus,

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intertwining households according to sound and true judgement, while continence is preferable to marriage, yet a believing married man is better than a continent unbeliever.48

Augustine thus extends his understanding of Israel’s holiness even further. Here was not simply a nation that was obedient to God’s first commandment to be fruitful and multiply; here was also a nation that had holy people who were likened to the virgins of the post-resurrection era, even though their actions may not look quite so holy as the later Christians. So Augustine suggests that in the prophetic age, holy women had to marry out of obedience to God, because without women who would bear children, Christ could not have been born.49 If holy women in the post-resurrection era had been living before Christ, he suggests, they too would have been bearing children, even if they did not desire to do so. Therefore, the holiness of postresurrection virgins and married women is similar to the holiness of women in Israel before Christ. Augustine makes this point further by comparing the holy women of Israel with the holy women of the church, both married and unmarried. In one passage he writes: When the apostle Paul said of unmarried women that they should be holy in both body and spirit (1 Cor 7:34), this should not be taken to mean that a married woman of faith, who is pure and, as the scripture says, submissive to her husband, is not holy in body but only in her mind. It is not possible for the body that is the instrument of a holy mind not to be itself made holy by that holy mind. . . . When Peter mentioned Sarah he only said ‘‘holy women,’’ and did not say ‘‘in body.’’50 In this way, Augustine prefers to posit continuity between the people of Israel and the Gentiles who would come after them, both married and virgin. A holy way of living is one directed toward God, regardless of how one arrives at that state of holiness. Such continuity is important because Augustine recognizes that Israel gives birth to those who will be future virgins. He observes in Holy Virginity: ‘‘At earlier times, before Christ became man, there was need to have descendants physically for a large nation, for it to be the bearer of prophecy.’’51 Yet the question becomes, how can the gap between an Old Law married state in which concupiscence, especially in the form of sexual desire, appears acceptable and even rampant become meshed with a future (New Law) virginal state in which concupiscence is detrimental? In the preceding quotes, Augustine intimates, even more directly than we saw earlier, that those people who were


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the bearers of Christ could have been virgins, and even would have been virgins, but for God’s plans. On his view it is against their best wishes and in spite of their knowledge that sexual concupiscence resulted from the fall, the holy people of Israel engaged in sex for procreation because of their obedience to God and humankind. The women he describes burned with desire for obedience to God. People who would, in post-incarnation times, have been virgins follow God in obedience anyway, in pre-resurrection times. Augustine alludes to the idea that prior to Christ’s coming, there were people who had the character of being virgins because there is ‘‘no reason to doubt’’ otherwise. Taking redemption history as a whole, virginity after the time of Christ is much preferred to the marriages that were required ‘‘for obedience’’ before Christ. However, in the range of options that Augustine sees with respect to states of life, he notes that while virginity is a very high good, other states of life offer much that is good. Widowhood, for example, earned great respect in the time before Christ. He compares Ruth, who remarries into Naomi’s (and Boaz’s) family, with Anna, the widow who sees in the child Jesus the Messiah. The reason, therefore, why Anna, the widow who married only once, was more blessed than Ruth was because she was worthy to be Christ’s prophetess. Even if she had no children . . . we have to believe that by the same Spirit that enabled her to recognize the baby, she foresaw that Christ was about to come into the world from a virgin. Rightly, therefore, even though she had no children, if in fact she had none, she decided against marrying again. She knew that it was now the time when Christ would be better served, not by the duty of bearing children but by dedicated continence, not by making her body fertile in marriage but by making her conduct chaste in widowhood.52 Anna’s widowhood names, for Augustine, a self-conscious moment when humans first recognized that marriage was unnecessary. Yet cryptically, Augustine also suggests, ‘‘If, however, Ruth also knew that from her body there was to come the seed from which Christ would take flesh, and she did service to this knowledge by marrying, I would not be so bold as to say that Anna’s widowhood was more blessed than that woman’s motherhood.’’53 Again, the key point of distinction comes from whether God has graciously given wisdom and insight to a person concerning the necessity of chastity, rather than the state of life as such. Therefore, the time after the fall but before Christ did not have virgins in the sense of a physical state of body, but they were holy even as post-resurrection unmarried women were holy. For Augustine, the primary state of life is

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one called holiness, out of which all other states, including virginity, come; thus, contrary to John Chrysostom, Augustine actually seems to name the primary means of holy living by means of virtue and right relationship with God (and most especially in obedience to God). John Chrysostom, on the other hand, compares the married to fledglings who have not left the nest. He writes: ‘‘Those who are more plodding in nature and are in a deep sleep still haunt the nest and are attached to worldly things. The truly noble, the lovers of light, however, quit the nest with great ease and fly high in the air and skim the heavens. Everything is left behind on earth: marriage, money, cares and all else that customarily drags us down to earth.’’54 Chrysostom’s line of thinking about marriage in the post-resurrection era follows from his reasoning about marriage at the time of the fall. Marriage cannot possibly be a good after Christ’s coming to earth; it must be left behind. Augustine’s account of creation and virginity also affects his views of humans living after the fall; thus, by contrast Augustine suggests ambiguity at creation regarding the presence of marriage and virginity, and therefore envisions many states of life, all of which can be part of faithful Christian living.The ambiguity with which Augustine describes marriage and virginity in creation comes through in his descriptions of Israel. While he is clear that Israel’s existence comes after the fall and therefore requires sex for human generation, he is certain that Israelite men and women had sex without lust and would have very likely done without sex in different circumstances. One of the reasons Augustine needs to see continuity between the Old and New Testaments is because he understands Israel’s history as integral to the church’s own. The children of Israel were the forerunners of the great City of God, the city of angels, and Jerusalem therefore was the city that foreshadowed the earth’s ultimate existence. ‘‘There was indeed on earth, so long as it was needed, a symbol and foreshadowing image of this city, which served the purpose of reminding men that such a city was to be, rather than of making it present; and this image was itself called the holy city, as a symbol of the future city though not itself the reality.’’55 Israel was a key element in the time before Christ, in that it manifested the grace that would more fully be known at the redemption and most fully known at the eschaton. This fact is important in Augustine’s description of Hagar and Ishmael against Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac. On Augustine’s view, Hagar foreshadows the earthly city because she gives birth to Ishmael at the behest of Sarah, who could not bear children of her own. Sarah herself, though, has a child only by the grace of God. Augustine indicates that Isaac’s birth results solely from God’s gracious action: ‘‘in a case in which the gift of God which was not due to men and was the gratuitous largess of grace, was to be conspicuous, it was requisite that a son be given in a


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way which no effort of nature could compass.’’56 Sarah, as a barren old woman, could not bear children except by ordering another person to bear one for her, or by receiving one from God’s grace. The child born of the second instance is the one who ‘‘[typifies] the children of grace, the citizens of the free city, who dwell together in everlasting peace, in which self-love and self-will have no place, but a ministering love that rejoices in the common joy of all.’’57 This is furthermore shown in Augustine’s juxtaposition of Isaac’s circumcision, ‘‘a nature renewed on the putting off of the old,’’58 with baptism, the means by which regeneration and generation occur in the post-resurrection world. Thus does Augustine find the possibility of virginity, with its fruitful and generative nature, in the Old Testament, but only by God’s grace, which is representative of the great and joyful grace we receive in Christ. Chrysostom, on the contrary, sees discontinuity between Israel and holy people after the time of Christ. He writes: ‘‘The same standard of virtue is not demanded of us and the people of the past. . . . Well then, do we live more strictly now than the patriarch?—We ought to, and we have accepted this precept but we do not live according to it, and so fall far short of the proper goal.’’59 Augustine’s comparisons of Old Testament women with holy women following Christ already seems to suggest that virginity can be understood in ways other than an intact body but also a life devoted entirely to God’s way of life and to ‘‘moral strictness.’’ All of God’s faithful people join in this virtuous life, including those who came before Christ. The Christian life is a life wholly grounded in Israel and encompassed by it. As he writes, ‘‘The other far more excellent, concerning not the carnal but the spiritual seed, by which he is the father, not of the one nation of Israel, but of all nations who follow the footsteps of his faith, which began to be promised in these words, ‘And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.’ ’’60 This will become more clear below in the discussion of redemption, because we shall see that Augustine’s views of Israel here dovetail with his conception of virginity in post-resurrection times as being both spiritual and physical.

Redemptive Single States of Life We turn, then, to a consideration of the states of life that Augustine deems proper for Christians. In Holy Virginity, he mentions three that are counted among Christians of his day: ‘‘First of all, let us not decide that the celibacy of widows bears no fruit at all, or lower it to the same level as married chastity, or raise it to the same honored rank as virginity.’’61 Yet Augustine is not certain that states of life should be reduced to only three, for he writes, ‘‘Because God

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in his kindness grants many gifts, and some are greater and better than others, so that the apostle can say, Aspire to the better gifts (1 Cor. 12:31), should we conclude that there are too many for them to be divided into three kinds?’’62 Martyrdom is perhaps a state of life, to Augustine’s way of thinking; so is monasticism, and these are all great gifts of God. What Augustine sees sprouting from the branch that was originally reserved for the Jewish people is a proliferation of states of life, all of which can lead to joy in God, if the gifts are rightly used. In what follows, I examine a few states of life that Augustine mentions specifically, while yet keeping in mind that, as I have already suggested, there are many appropriate states of life in Christianity which has significant implications for marriage and singleness in the present day.

Virginity: After the Example of Christ What is Christian virginity on Augustine’s terms? What is it that changes between pre- and post-resurrection times? First, virginity is what we tend to think of today, a physical state in which one has had no sexual relations for he suggests, ‘‘Bodily virginity, however, is not for everyone. In fact, those who have already lost their virginity do not have the option of being virgins. The rest of the faithful, therefore, who have lost bodily virginity, must follow him, not wherever he goes, but wherever they can.’’63 So if, in his descriptions of creation, fall, and the people of Israel, he has thus far seemed ambiguous about what it means to be a virgin (because we do not, after all, know what truly happened in the Garden), in the post-resurrection world, he is entirely clear precisely because Christ, as the Virgin, has made the path clear. Christ becomes the referent for a life of virginity. However, this virginity is not primarily a matter of an intact body with respect to sex but a matter of both spiritual and physical virginity, which Augustine discusses in detail. There are at least three ways in which Christ has made the path of virginity clear for his disciples, as opposed to the lack of clarity in times before his presence on earth, and all three ways point to Augustine’s delineation of physical and spiritual virginity. First, Christ offers direct teaching about virginity, which Augustine emphasizes in his treatise to virgins: There are some who are born eunuchs; and there are others who are made eunuchs by man; and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone who is able to accept this accept it (Mt. 19:10–12). [Augustine comments] What could be said more honestly or more clearly? It is Christ saying this, it is the Truth saying it, it is the Power and Wisdom of God saying it: those who


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with devout intentions refrain from taking a wife make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven.64 Augustine almost overemphasizes that Christ himself gives the mandate for being eunuchs, but only a certain kind of eunuch. This direct teaching about virginity has the stipulation, on Augustine’s view, of requiring ‘‘devout intentions,’’ such that the eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven are the ones with the greatest reward. Those who are virgins of this second voluntary kind are participating most fully in the life that is to come (though Augustine is careful, as always, to say that those who are married may also find glory in the kingdom of heaven, but differently).65 Virginity offers a taste of life in the kingdom of heaven, even while we are on this earth, and this virginity is not, first and foremost, the physically enforced virginity of those eunuchs who are born that way or who are the eunuchs of kings and rich people. To make his point even more clear, Augustine comments: Even so, are there any so demented in their opposition to the truth as to believe that in God’s house those who have been made eunuchs physically have a more honorable place than married people, while arguing that those who choose to be celibate for religious reasons, and discipline their bodies to the point of rejecting marriage, and become eunuchs not by making their body impotent, but by making the basic sensuality in them impotent, following a heavenly and angelic way of life while still in their earthly mortal condition, are only equal in merit to married persons? Would a Christian contradict Christ, when he praises those who make themselves eunuchs, not for this world but for the kingdom of heaven . . . ?66 Augustine sees that Christ himself makes a distinction about what it means to practice virginity; for the Christian it is first about looking toward God over worrying about the physical state of one’s body. The second way Christ sets a clear path in terms of virginity is through his own physical state of life. Christ is, of course, Augustine’s perfect man. He says, citing scripture: ‘‘we all come to the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man.’’67 As the perfect man, he ‘‘without doubt . . . is virginal too. In his glorified state he himself retains what he did not take from his mother when he was conceived and born. Rightly you follow him by virginity in body and heart, wherever he goes.’’68 Because Mary was also a virgin, Christ retains his own physical virginity in even greater depth than mere humans can do because he is even born from virginity. Those who wish to follow him most perfectly do well also to retain that virginity.

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Augustine makes an even stronger point about following Christ’s path: ‘‘What does ‘follow’ mean except ‘imitate’? Because Christ suffered for us, and left us an example, for us to follow in his footsteps. Everyone follows him insofar as imitating him, not as the only Son of God through whom all things were made, but as son of a human parent who, as was fitting, presented in his own person the model to be imitated.’’69 Virginity is a means of participating most directly in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and not solely because Christ is a virgin, but also somehow because of Christ’s own suffering. What is more, Augustine’s point about Christ as a parent and the virgin as a ‘‘son’’ imitates closely his own relationship with his mother. She and he were both virgins; in similar manner Christ’s followers can become virgins if they see him as the ‘‘parent.’’ The virgin who imitates Christ becomes part of his life to the point of being as closely related to Christ as a son. ‘‘It is good that he wants interior beauty from you, when he has given you the power to become children of God.’’70 Christ’s state of life as a virgin is also important for the way he is a model of humility. Humility is the great virtue that virgins of Christ must practice, ‘‘for the main source of instruction and example of humility we must certainly look to Christ himself. What more can I demand from virgins in the way of humility over and above what he commanded . . . ?’’71 Christ lowered himself to become a servant among us and to die a death on the cross, and so a virgin must learn from such a life because she is prone to ‘‘self-satisfaction’’ because she has rejected marriage and the cares and worries of this world.72 If such a person truly wants to follow Christ, she must not be boastful of her state of life but must more greatly take on Christ’s suffering by being mindful, again and again, of Christ’s humility on the cross. In this way, she becomes not only a physical virgin but also a virgin in heart, which is the more important of the two kinds of virginity. Thus Augustine is willing to say that those virgins who were raped during the sack of Rome have ‘‘as an unassailable position, that the virtue which makes the life good has its throne in the soul, and thence rules the members of the body, which becomes holy in virtue of the holiness of the will.’’73 The third way in which Christ sets a clear path is through his body, the church. He observes: ‘‘Behold what the perfect man is—the head and the body, which is made up of all the members, which in their own time shall be perfected.’’74 This body is, for Augustine, not quite an eschatological vision, though it does have some foretaste of that vision. As he says, ‘‘Even though the Church, which exists in this world, is sometimes called the kingdom of heaven, there is no doubt it is spoken of in this way because it exists for the future life of eternity.’’75 This statement about the church may be seen as directly parallel to


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Augustine’s statements about virginity as a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven, mentioned earlier. The link between Christ’s virgins and the church as Christ’s Virgin is all the more important because of the way Augustine notes a connection to generativity. It is not simply the case that virgins have a holy life because they are unmarried and have intact bodies; they also have a holy life because of the ways in which they are greatly fertile. The church is Christ’s virgin, fecund because she bears innumerable numbers of children who are baptized into new life;76 likewise, a virgin will ‘‘procure the birth of members for Christ more abundantly and fruitfully than would be possible from her womb, however fertile.’’77

Mary as Example for Virgins Mary is also crucial for Augustine’s understanding of virginity with respect to redemption, in part because of what I have suggested about generativity with respect to life as a virgin.78 Augustine marvels at the fact that Mary is Christ’s mother and ‘‘mother of his members, which is ourselves, since she has cooperated with charity for the birth of the faithful in the Church.’’79 She has therefore become mother of many, indeed of the whole church, even though she is a virgin. Perhaps more significantly, the redemption of humanity and the formation of the church occur, in part, through a female body that is not affected by members that ‘‘war with each other.’’ Virgins are mothers along with Mary, and because of her they can ‘‘give birth with honor only to the one who could have no equal in the manner of his birth. Truly, though, that motherhood of one holy virgin is an honor for all holy virgins.’’80 One of the marks of a virgin, then, is generativity, which is seen as parallel to the generativity of married women, and at the same time, better. Virgins are mothers of Christ (as all Christians are),81 but they do not also have the worries and burdens of physical birth, labor, and child rearing and are thus able to follow Christ more closely. Additionally, Mary’s virginal body represents the nuptial union between Christ and the church and as such already demonstrates the many ways in which Christians must understand states of life. Augustine therefore writes in his commentary on Psalm 44/45: ‘‘The nuptial union is effected between the Word and human flesh, and the place where the union is consummated is the Virgin’s womb.’’82 Mary’s description as virgin is necessary to Augustine’s ecclesiological understanding because it is specifically due to the state of virginity that relationships must be reconfigured. A virgin cannot be viewed only in a physical sense as having an intact body that takes no part in sex (and

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therefore marriage), but must instead be seen as a figure of other virgins (Christ, Mary, and the church), who paradoxically enable relationships that might otherwise appear impossible for virgins. Therefore, on Augustine’s view, it is not only the case that possible Christian states of life explode in number after Christ’s coming; it is also the case that the very definition of these states of life becomes inevitably changed. Virginity is a state that allows for marriage and motherhood alongside a sexless, virtuous life. We can readily see the necessity of Mary and Christ to Augustine’s account of virginity with respect to redemption when we compare his writing to John Chrysostom’s views. For Chrysostom, virginity’s glory is its direct imitation of Christ. Virginity has the ‘‘power to make saints’’83 precisely because of the intense life of asceticism and devotion to Christ that practice of virginity entails. The virgin, in order to remain a virgin and fight the battles of chastity, must observe strict fasts and lengthy periods of prayer. Marriage, on the other hand, offers only a way to deal with the pressures of this world; married people must remain devoted to each other rather than focusing on Christ. Marriage is bondage to another person, but virginity offers freedom, especially freedom to follow Christ.84 By contrast, while Augustine also suggests that virgins are more free to follow Christ because they are not bound by marriage, there is not the same stark contrast between married and virgin. He writes, ‘‘The special joy of Christ’s virgins is not the same as that of non-virgins, even if they too are Christ’s. Others have other joys, but none of them have this kind. Go for these, follow the Lamb, because without doubt the body of the Lamb is virginal too.’’85 What Augustine distinguishes here is not between a life of trouble and toil, and a life of joy, as Chrysostom does, but between two lives of joy. The life of the virgin is the life of one who has achieved perfect union with Christ, ‘‘about Christ, in Christ’’ because ‘‘the Lamb is virginal too.’’ Yet, again, this magnifies the distinction between Augustine and Chrysostom’s visions of marriage and virginity in the plan of salvation; the conception whether it was marriage or virginity that was God’s first vision at creation carries throughout the theological understanding of salvation history. Virginity becomes an example of close relationships with Christ, to which we might draw parallels with the understanding of the marital relationship being akin to the relationship between Christ and his bride, the church. Augustine will not say that those who do not have bodily virginity cannot ‘‘follow the Lamb.’’ On the contrary, he says, ‘‘The rest of the faithful, therefore, who have lost bodily virginity, must follow him, not wherever he goes, but wherever they can. They can, however, go everywhere, except when he walks with the honor of virginity.’’86 Augustine’s examples of imitation on the part of those


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who are not physical virgins are the Beatitudes, and the parables in which the Samaritan helps the man stranded on the side of the road. This too is imitation, ‘‘even if they do not put their feet exactly in the same footprints, at least they walk the same path.’’87 Virginity is thus not the only possible relationship, but the point is that both marriage and virginity are figures of relationships, each of which manifests part of the character of what it means to be in the Body of Christ.

Water Is Thicker Than Blood: The Spiritual and Physical Virginity of the Church If virginity was, at the fall, the great yawning gap that showed us negatively what we could not achieve, with Christ’s coming it becomes the great bond that holds all of us together. Augustine demonstrates this fact by comparing and contrasting the ways in which marriage and virginity operate together. Following from the example of both Christ and Mary, Augustine’s views on virginity and marriage in the post-resurrection world are described in terms of two criteria: there is virginity and marriage, but each of these is further divided into a spiritual and physical state, such that there is both spiritual and physical marriage (and motherhood), as well as spiritual and physical virginity. Thus, virgins who have remained chaste for their entire lives have spiritual and physical virginity, as well as spiritual motherhood, because all in the church are mothers of Christ. Physical virginity is attributed to the one who ‘‘keeps her body intact’’ because of Christ,88 whereas physical motherhood is attributed to the one who bears children. Married people may have both spiritual and physical marriage, and they may also have spiritual virginity, because of their practice of virtue and by reason of their baptism in Christ, but they do not have physical virginity as the highest goal. All baptized Christians living a virtuous life have the spiritual states of both marriage and virginity. Indeed, Augustine cites Jesus’ words: It is written in the gospel that when a message was brought to Christ that his mother and brothers, that is, his relatives by birth, were waiting outside unable to come nearer because of the crowd, he answered, ‘‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’’ And stretching his hands over his disciples, he said, ‘‘These are my brothers’’; and then, ‘‘Whoever does my Father’s will, that person is my brother and mother and sister.’’ (Mt. 12:48–50). What was he teaching us other than to value our spiritual family more highly than relationship by birth, and that what makes people blessed is not being close to upright and holy

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intertwining households persons by blood relationship, but being united with them by obeying and imitating their doctrine and way of life.89

Augustine here alludes to how Jesus, and the church as his body, reconfigures relationships between people, making physical parenthood a nonnecessity in this post-resurrection world. The spiritual family, to which we are joined by water rather than blood, does hold us together more tightly. People who do not bear children most fully demonstrate this relationship, but not exclusively so. In a text in which he compares children of the Mother, the church, to physical motherhood, he writes, ‘‘Mothers, who give birth physically to children who are not Christians, cooperate in this holy child-bearing in order for them to become what they know they could not have been by physical birth. They cooperate by themselves also being virgins and mothers of Christ, namely, in faith, which works through love (Galatians 5:6).’’90 Mothers who give birth to ‘‘children of Adam’’ are yet virgins and also mothers of Christ if they have faith. Charity is another virtue that Augustine holds to be part of spiritual virginity: ‘‘Every devout soul that does the will of his Father by the fertile power of charity is Christ’s mother in those to whom it gives birth, until Christ himself is formed in them.’’91 Mary alone can be said to fit all four descriptive titles (both spiritual and physical marriage and virginity), and it is for this reason that she becomes an important person and the figure of the church. As Augustine reflects: ‘‘So it was fitting that by a unique miracle our head was born physically from a virgin, to signify that his members would be born spiritually from the virgin church. Only Mary, then, is mother and virgin both spiritually and physically, both Christ’s mother and Christ’s virgin.’’92 Through Mary’s example for spiritual birth via baptismal water and Christ’s redemptive work, it is possible for all humans to participate in spiritual benefits of both states of life. Hence, Augustine suggests, ‘‘On the other hand, the Church as a whole, in the saints destined to possess God’s kingdom, is Christ’s mother spiritually and also Christ’s virgin spiritually, but as a whole she is not these things physically. Rather in some persons she is a virgin of Christ and in others she is a mother, though not Christ’s mother.’’93 The church, life in Christ’s Body, thus becomes the grand fulfillment of these states of life, as we shall see more fully in chapters 5 and 6. Because married people are spiritual virgins and, with all Christians, are to lead lives of virginity (by which Augustine here means a life of virtue), marriage has a reference point in virginity and therefore the church. In some sense, it can claim virginal character. Likewise, a life of virginity has a reference point in


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marriage, especially that between Christ and the church, and can claim some sense of the character of being married. The church, then, draws up these states of life together, and just as we saw in the previous chapter on marriage and salvation history, Christ’s presence puts a distinguishing mark on states of life and changes conceptions of what it means to be ‘‘married’’ and ‘‘family’’ and ‘‘household.’’ At the moment of creation in salvation history, I suggested some ambiguity about the possibility of virginity even in the midst of marriage; here, in the post-resurrection era there is also ambiguity, displayed with the possibility of marriage in the midst of a life of virginity. What is virginal is married, in a sense, but in a much different sense than humanity could have imagined preresurrection. Marriage and virginity become highly transformed and because there is ambiguity, there are also many states of life that can lead Christians on the path to virtue and full participation in the life of God. In the next few sections, I describe some of these possibilities.

Widowhood On the Good of Holy Widowhood was most likely composed in 414 to Anicia Juliana, at her request. Juliana lived with her mother-in-law, Anicia Faltonia Proba, also a widow, and together they constituted a community of widows (of sorts).94 Augustine’s concern is not solely for Juliana, however; ‘‘you will certainly read things that by no means apply to you personally or to those who live in Christ with you, and are not strictly necessary for the guidance of your life. Although I have addressed this letter to you, I have not written it only for you, and I have by no means overlooked the possibility that through you it might also be of benefit to others.’’95 Widowhood, for Augustine, functions aptly as a state in between virginity and marriage, and it is considered as a separate state of life. As such, it is both an expression of the proliferation of various states of life due to the coming of Christ and also indicative of the kind of ambiguity Augustine already names in his other treatises. In commenting on Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (7:8), Augustine suggests: ‘‘[Paul] means by the word ‘unmarried’ those who are not now subject to the marriage bond, whether or not they have been in the past. He makes this clear elsewhere, when he says, An unmarried woman, and a virgin, is set apart (1 Cor. 7:33).’’96 Augustine sees that ‘‘unmarried woman’’ means a widowed woman, since Paul is clearly making a distinction. Therefore, on his view, widowed women compared favorably to the life the apostle himself leads.97 Married chastity is good, but widowed celibacy is better.98

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In this treatise, Augustine bolsters what he has said in his other writings on virginity (and marriage) in that he sets a high priority on a life of virtue, over against ‘‘membership’’ in a particular state of life. While he does not condemn those who decide to marry a second time,99 he leans heavily on the point that a good life of widowhood is the measure of a widow’s ‘‘religious devotion’’ or a life of virtue.100 For example, Augustine considers the following question: [Which] widow has greater merit: one who has only one husband, and after living with her husband for a long time, and having children who are now provided for, embraces celibacy when she becomes a widow; or one who, while still a young woman, loses two husbands within the space of two years, and then, without consolation of having had children, vows her chastity to God and perseveres unwaveringly in that holy state into old age.101 He takes the side of the widow with only one husband because she has ranked ‘‘spiritual virtue’’ above ‘‘natural happiness.’’102 That is, the widow with two husbands in a short amount of time first ran to another husband before settling on a life of chastity. Augustine takes this, then, to be a measure of devotion to Christ.103 He says, too, in a scathing review of his opponents: ‘‘So it is, indeed, that even when they have been married several times, Catholic women are rightly considered superior, not only to the heretics’ widows of one marriage, but even to their virgins.’’104 The one who has the right relationship to Christ and to the church is the good person, regardless of state of life. As in his earlier treatises, one’s state of life as a devout Christian is only determinative of the kind of joy one has, both in this life and at the eschaton. At the same time, and especially in this later treatise in which we see direct refutation of Pelagian teachings,105 Augustine says that anyone wishing to live a life of vowed widowhood must rely on God’s graciousness. Widowhood, as with chastity in all the states of life, is only good as a gift from God because it is only by God’s grace that anyone is able to live any life of chastity. Hence, Augustine says, ‘‘He, who has granted it to the married faithful that they refrain from adultery and fornication, has granted to virgins and widows that they refrain from all sexual union.’’106 Therefore, Augustine’s view of grace here serves to reinforce his view that all states of life are caught up in God’s life and work. Given that it is God’s grace that provides for all things necessary to any one state of life because otherwise the ‘‘external toil is all in vain,’’107 Augustine closes his treatise on widowhood with exhortations to pray psalms and to do good works, in which should be pleasure to attain God.108 Augustine’s vision for holy widowhood, then, reinforces what he suggests about states of life after Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. It is one of many


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means by which to live a faithful life, provided that that life is directed toward virtue and an end in God.

Monasticism Marriage and virginity as reference points do have eschatological character (which we shall see more fully in the next chapter), and yet in the present time this is held in tension with daily life and the work of maintaining a household. That is, the way in which life is lived in our post-resurrection world demonstrates the goodness of any life of virginity or marriage. This occurs first and foremost in the way the Christian community is able to see the development of virtues in all its adherents. The ‘‘spiritual’’ category which Augustine names is not disembodied from present bodily concerns but must be connected to those concerns directly, if one seeks to be spiritually Christ’s ‘‘mother’’ and ‘‘virgin.’’ We can see this most clearly in one other of Augustine’s treatises on single states of life, which shows this tension more prominently. Monasticism could be said to be a subset of virginity in that it, too, requires a life of celibacy, but for Augustine it actually has a different character. He does not really consider virgins in community, but in his consideration of monasticism living in community is paramount. A monastic rule is attributed to Augustine’s name and may be indicative of the way he lived his own life in chastity, though it is doubtful that he actually wrote the rule.109 Augustine’s treatise The Work of Monks was written in about 400, to a community of monks in Carthage. These monks were apparently unruly, undisciplined in their way of life, and causing a disturbance in the bishopric, since they had many lay followers. Aurelius, bishop of the area, requested that Augustine offer some words of wisdom and advice to these monks.110 The text itself deals principally with justification for why monks ought to work, since some of them had decided to follow Matthew 6:25–34 most closely, asserting that the injunction ‘‘not to worry about tomorrow’’ is also an injunction not to do work.111 Thus, the bulk of Augustine’s treatise deals with scriptural justification for monks to do manual labor themselves rather than hire others to do it. He puts forth Paul and Barnabas as apostolic examples of people who did manual labor to pay for their keep, even as they also preached the gospel.112 For our purposes, the most illuminating aspect of this treatise comes in chapter 25, where Augustine considers the question: ‘‘How does it profit the servant of God to have abandoned the activities which he pursued in the world and to have been converted to this spiritual life and service, if it is still necessary for him to practice a trade like an ordinary workman?’’113 By the monks’ reckoning, they have already given up worldly relationships and ought,

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therefore, to be able to devote themselves solely to God, which means to do no work. Augustine’s answer, however, echoes what he suggested in his treatise on virginity: ‘‘Are we so incapable of understanding the sweetness of Christ that we do not know how great a swelling of deeply rooted pride is healed when, after the removal of the superfluities with which his spirit was fatally possessed, the humility of the worker does not refuse to perform lowly labors . . . ?’’114 Physical labor shows the humility with which one has taken on this ‘‘spiritual’’ life. Just as Augustine notes that a true virgin must be a virgin physically and spiritually, so too a monk’s single-heartedness of purpose in Christ cannot be left to an ethereal realm. Virginity and monasticism are states of life indicative of the world to come, but they are not states of life that guarantee an automatic exit from this earth. Additionally, the monk who is most set on the Lord is ‘‘no longer seeking what things are his own but rather those of Jesus Christ, he has devoted himself to the charity of common life, intending to live in companionship with those who have one heart and one soul in God, so that no one calls anything his own but all things are held in common.’’115 A life devoted to Christ does not therefore mean a life spent ignoring the other members of one’s community. In fact, the point most indicative of charity in this passage is that the monks live ‘‘with one heart and one soul,’’ together directed toward God. Scholar Willemien Otten supports this observation by comparing Augustine’s comments to those of John Cassian, another early father of monasticism and asceticism. She writes: If we compare Augustine’s stand on the monastic life with that of Cassian who was so thoroughly influenced by the mentality of the desert, it is striking that his focus is not on the monk’s lack of perfection, but on the community’s love and concord. What is central in the functioning of a monastic community is that its members are of one mind and heart. It is this concord from which all other tasks of monastic life follow, be it common sharing of all things, relinquishing personal property, or persevering in prayer. While Cassian valued community primarily because of the social pressures that would force the monk to work on his personal perfection, Augustine considers the community rather than the individual soul the perfect locus for attaining a life of charity guided by unity of heart.116 Thus, monasticism lived rightly is a state of life that encompasses the so-called worldly problems of labor and relationships, and displays the best of what the life of a Christian, married or single, ought to be like.


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Conclusions The ambiguity that Augustine puts forth in his descriptions of creation and Israel concerning whether those who are married may see the benefits of the virginal state comes to full fruition in his account of redemption. There is ambiguity about the state of virginity through the whole of salvation history precisely because Augustine takes no definitive stance on how virginity looks as a state of life among the baptized, except that it must be conformed to the life of Christ and related to the ecclesiological community. As such, it involves a life of virtue and attention to relationships, especially those that come from the church by baptism. In contemporary culture we are no less prone to ambiguities involving what it means to be single or married. As I suggested in the introduction to this chapter, we are very likely to assume we know what it means to be a virgin (to be physically ‘‘intact’’ and to live without sex), and we are likely to define that state of life in solely physical terms. ‘‘Singleness’’ is a complex word that has no single meaning; yet, in contemporary culture we are likely to name it as a state that allows for sexual license, even and perhaps especially in the case of priestly celibacy. Consequently, ‘‘singleness’’ is seen as a state of life that is almost entirely separate from ethics, or at least the sphere known as ‘‘sexual ethics.’’ This point is related to the ways in which we are prone to see ‘‘singleness’’ characterized by the absence of marriage, which only serves to reinforce ‘‘singleness’’ as separate from marriage. A look at Augustine’s visions of the various single states of life enables some moves beyond these conundrums. First, the ambiguities that are present in our current views of singleness are not dismissed by Augustine’s understanding of salvation history; rather, Augustine takes those ambiguities as givens and shows how all God’s people are, and have been, drawn into lives of marriage and virginity (in particular). Here there is no separation between states of life, even after the fall, because of the way God uses the holy people of Israel to close the breach that became possible because of the fall. Second, these states of life have their end in Christ, who becomes a multiple reference point for both marriage and virginity. In addition, through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, all states of life become reconfigured, and these events even mean that there are more than one or two states of life. As such, there can be no instance of a separate ethics for the married and ‘‘everyone else.’’ Augustine’s emphasis is on a life of virtues (given by God’s own grace). For Augustine, one of the primary problems of human society is

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disordered desire and the resultant disordered and lustful sex (and this does raise issues for those wanting to name sexual desire as a good). Let it not be assumed, however, that Augustine singles out married people because of their use of sex; Augustine’s views on rightly ordering desire are for the life of the church as a whole, and the need for the church, as virgin, to maintain its state of life, among both the married and those who are single.117 This requires Augustine’s spiritual virginity as a way of life for all Christians. Finally, and perhaps most important, Augustine suggests that we cannot define states of singleness solely as the absence of marriage. Marriage and virginity, in particular, rely on each other as reference points for intelligibly understanding what it means to be either married or single. In addition, the church puts forth a holistic vision of what it means to be married and single that draws these states of life into itself, as the Body of Christ. Via the church, we are returned to the original, ambiguous state we had at creation, somehow both married and virgin, because the church itself is both married and virgin.118 Words like ‘‘single’’ and perhaps even ‘‘monk’’ therefore need to be theologically reevaluated for their ability to describe adequately the whole Christian state of life. The words themselves imply, in many cases, ‘‘individual’’ and ‘‘one,’’ but Christianity denies that a person exists as a sole ‘‘one.’’ The range of states of ‘‘singleness,’’ too, suggests that these words cannot be quite accurate in their use. The Body of Christ, the church, becomes the important referent for all Christian households because it is both virgin and married; as the Household of God, in which the sacraments are celebrated, the church becomes a stage for moral activity in its ritual practice and even in daily household rituals. It is to the connection between the church, marriage, and singleness, that we shall now turn.

part iii

Christians’ Eschatological Home


5 Households Expanding Eschatological Visions of Christ

Salvation history shows theologically that marriage and singleness belong together and cannot be separated on the timeline in ways that scholars like Paul Ramsey or even John Paul II seem to suggest. Both are enfolded together in God’s history of grace, each enmeshed and dependent on the other. Of course, salvation history does not end with the act of redemption but continues, and it drives humanity toward the end of all things, the time when God will be all-in-all. The household therefore continues to be reconfigured. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians: ‘‘He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will.’’1 We are adopted in Christ to claim heavenly inheritance, as heirs with Christ, which implies a radical re-formation of households for all, those who are married and those who are not married. This eschatological vision is something hoped for but not something quite attained in the present, so likewise we do not quite have access to an image of what marriage or singleness will be like in that end-of-times. Nonetheless, many theologians do suggest that we have a partial view of that eschatological vision now, in the time between the moment Christ came and redeemed us (and marriage/singleness) and the moment that will be. All states of life are gathered up into one Household in the church. The church universal particularly provides that glimpse through its worship. Geoffrey Wainwright suggests: ‘‘For worship not only supplies the atmosphere in which the churches can make the eschatological journey together into all God’s truth: it

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christians’ eschatological home

is even now a provisional expression of that truth, and the divine kingdom and human salvation consist in the true worship of God by his creatures.’’2 Eastern theologians are especially fond of describing the church, Christ’s body on earth, as a place where the eternal kingdom of God and the temporal residence of humanity coexist. Alexander Schmemann’s book on baptism, for example, discusses how this ‘‘sacrament of regeneration’’ is an ‘‘epiphany of the Kingdom of God.’’3 Schmemann describes the tradition in the early church of making a procession after the baptism rite. People processed around the church building and through the church doors, which represented an entrance into the kingdom where all Christians could feast at the heavenly banquet, represented in the church building by the Eucharist.4 The heavenly banquet is not one we experience in fullness, but it is one that we truly taste in the Eucharistic celebration. This partially realized eschatology in the church’s worship reveals something about the character of marriage and singleness, as well. Just as marriage, virginity, monasticism, and the like have been unified in the history of redemption, so they are further unified in the in-between times and especially in the church. Augustine’s manner of considering marriage and various states of singleness in terms of the unifying history of salvation prepares his readers for this further explosive character of marriage and singleness when considering the ways in which households, in the Household of God, live toward the eschaton. This chapter focuses on that expansive character of eschatology in relation to households. I begin by looking at the way in which one enters that Household via baptism, identifying the ways in which baptism continues the reconfiguration of familial structures that we saw begin in other events of salvation history. Then I consider more fully what the nature of the neophyte’s new home is.

Baptized in Christ, We Have Put on Christ Augustine and the Formation of the Christian’s Family We have already seen how Augustine threads consideration of salvation history through his many treatises on marriage, virginity, and other states of life. In this section, I focus particularly on one of Augustine’s commentaries on the psalms and other scriptural texts, many of which are homilies used in liturgical celebration. It is not surprising that Augustine should spend much time in sermons and expositions addressing concerns about how to live in households:

households expanding

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whereas his treatises on marriage, virginity, and the like had been addressed to particular people (no matter how far-flung) and then subsequently published, the sermons were the place for him to address the particular needs of his own congregation, which needed to be constantly reminded of how to live rightly.5 What becomes clear in these sermons is that it is not possible, particularly in this mixed-up world, to worship God rightly without recognizing that households also bear the image of God and are a location where we learn to worship God and live godly lives rightly, in relationship with the church. A key reconfiguration, throughout Augustine’s sermons, letters, and works, is the relationship between baptism and the resultant understanding of what it means to be a child or a family, both in terms of the church into which the person is baptized and also in terms of the smaller household in which one resides. In Augustine’s time, baptism often occurred at the Easter vigil, and the homilies preached during that time were often mystagogical: that is, they would provide theological accounts of the sacraments that the newly baptized had received (baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist). These homilies would also describe the church in which the neophytes now found themselves. From these sermons, we see how seriously baptism was taken, at least in Augustine’s cathedral. In one of his many Easter sermons, preached to the neophytes, Augustine writes: [Of] these days [the Easter season], the seven or eight we are in at the moment are earmarked for telling the infantes about the sacraments they have received. A short while ago they were called ‘‘Askers’’; now they’re called ‘‘Infants.’’ They were called askers because they were agitating their mother’s womb, asking to be born. They are called infants because they have just now been born to Christ, having previously been born to the world.6 The word ‘‘child’’ and the theme of being child- or infantlike, used to refer to people of any age, naturally figures throughout Augustine’s Easter sermons (because of the vigil and its baptisms), along with continuous exhortations to the neophytes and the faithful about what it means to belong to Christ’s body, with Christ as the head, and what is now required of the newly baptized. Also continuous in these sermons is Augustine’s constant reminder to all the faithful to maintain their character as Christian members of the church. He warns them to be people who are worthy of imitation for the neophytes and not to be slanderers, adulterers, or thieves: So you, then, brothers and sisters, you, sons and daughters, you, the new offspring of mother Church, I beg you by what you have received

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christians’ eschatological home to fix your eyes on the one who called you, who loved you, who went looking for you when you were lost, who enlightened you when you were found; and not to follow the ways of the lost, for whom the name of ‘‘faithful’’ is just a mistake; I mean, we’re not asking what they are called but whether they fit their name. If they have been born, where is their new mode of life? If they are of the faithful, believers, where is their faith? I hear the name, let me also recognize the reality.7

Family is refigured in baptism; no longer is the primary importance blood relations or even that one has the name of Christian, but what matters is one’s right relationship with God. Augustine shares this sense of the reconfigured family with several of his contemporaries. In On the Soul and the Resurrection, Gregory of Nyssa deals with the concrete problem of losing a loved one (his sister) and how this relates to Christ’s resurrection above all. Grief at losing a sister does not impede the joy one has at rejoicing in the resurrection of the body, which we have because of Christ. The difference for Augustine, however, is his own understanding of how the resurrection of Christ is realized eschatologically in the church. This eschatological vision is one that is filled with hope, but it is not one that is saccharinely sweet, avoiding all possibility of pain, decay, and death, nor of some exalted claim of a peaceful family in this life. For example, in his reflections on verse 4 of Psalm 44/45 (‘‘Gird your sword upon your thigh, mighty warrior’’), Augustine asks the question, ‘‘What sword is this?’’8 His answer to this question is to quote Jesus’ words from Matthew 10:34 and Luke 12:52–53: ‘‘I have come to bring not peace but a sword, and again, There will be five in one household ranged in opposition, two against three, and three pitted against two: a son against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.’’9 Augustine says that it is Christ’s sword that has split families. When a father offers an earthly estate that is rejected by a son who desires a heavenly inheritance, the father feels slighted, though he should not because the son prefers no one to the father except God. Christ’s sword divides more than the biological bonds of parenthood unite. From this point, Augustine turns to make an even more distinctive statement about the church and Christ, regarding the fact that Christ himself leaves his mother and father. He says, of Christ: ‘‘He left his father and mother to cleave to his wife, that they might be two in one flesh. This is not some fancy of mine, but a truth attested by the apostle, who says, This is a great mystery, but I am referring it to Christ and the Church (Eph 5:32).’’10 Augustine says that Jesus


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left his Father according to Philippians 2:6–7, when he took on the form of a slave and emptied himself, not regarding equality with God as something to be esteemed. He left his mother by leaving Judaism, represented by the synagogue that ‘‘clung to the old rites.’’11 Again, Augustine quotes scripture, this time from Matthew 12:48, where the disciples tell Jesus that his mother and brothers wait outside to see him, but Jesus responds, ‘‘Who is my mother, who are my brothers?’’ Augustine adds, ‘‘Who is the mother-in-law? The Bridegroom’s mother. And the mother of our Bridegroom, our Lord Jesus Christ, is the synagogue. Obviously, her daughter-in-law is the Church, which has come from the Gentiles and will have no truck with circumcision of the flesh, so she is set against her mother-in-law.’’12 In this exposition, Augustine uses metaphor to push all boundaries to their limit so that he can speak of church as new kind of family. His idea of Mary as synagogue in opposition to her daughter-inlaw the church (as opposed to other passages where he names Mary as metaphor for the church) demonstrates that the Christian church family connected and yet distinct from the family of God known in Judaism and represented by the synagogue. The focus on Christ leaving his parents serves as a metaphorical means of putting the whole conversation about families in squarely Christological terms. We do not have any true family except the one by which we are joined to Christ in marriage because Christ himself has renounced familial ties. Family ties and family conceptions, like the words themselves that are used metaphorically and stretched to breaking, are broken, shattered, brought back together in Christ, and re-formed. For Augustine, then, what is of primary importance is the relationship between Christ and the church, not the family or the marriage, as such. It is along such lines as these, moreover, that we have some sense of how intensely important the life of the church is, replete with its sacraments, its solemn feasts, and its guidance and instruction to the faithful. Augustine writes: Christ died, he rose again, he ascended, and he withdrew his bodily presence, so his brothers took his wife for the purpose of begetting children through the preaching of the gospel—not by their own power, but through the gospel—that their Brother’s name might be perpetuated. . . . Accordingly, as they were raising up offspring for their Brother, they did not call the children they begot ‘‘Paulines’’ or ‘‘Petrines’’ but ‘‘Christians.’’13 These new offspring are given life and raised up through baptism, which is a restructuring of family now known as Christian, because Christ has reconfigured the means by which family is made.

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Through the Church Doors: Augustine’s Vision of the Church as Household The church that the newly baptized join is not only one in which human familial patterns are restructured but also a church that has an entirely new relationship with Christ, which reconfigures the meaning of marriage. Augustine hints, again in a sermon to neophytes, that their baptisms are an entrance into a marriage with Christ. ‘‘This is what it means to wear the wedding garment,’’ Augustine says, ‘‘that you seek his honor, his glory.’’14 The entirety of the psalm becomes a hymn to God and a reminder that our first vocation as the baptized is to be worshipers of God, because we as members of the church celebrate nuptial union with God. One of the primary and more lasting images through the ages has been the image of Christ as Bridegroom and the church as the Bride. This image represents the most complete reconfiguration of households because it is entirely dependent on Christ’s revelation in human history, is carried in several of the Gospel texts, and is often typologically related to the numerous Old Testament passages (found in the Song of Songs, several psalms, and Proverbs, among others) that depict God as the bridegroom and Israel as the bride. This imagery is also conveyed in some of Paul’s letters and is the beginning of the kind of struggle that early church fathers had as they tried to sort through the various, often quite disparate, texts that the scriptures give us regarding marriage and virginity.15 Indeed, how was it that Paul could claim to favor virginity over marriage even as, in Ephesians, he suggests that marriage is a figure for the union between Christ and the church? Psalm 44/45 makes use of bridegroom/bride imagery, and many of Augustine’s contemporaries used it to speak of specific household arrangements. David Hunter investigates Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine for their interpretations of virginity and asceticism with regard to the psalm because he finds these three to be most closely engaged in debates about asceticism emerging in the late fourth century. Where Jerome and Ambrose used the bridal imagery in Song of Songs and in Psalm 44/45 as a means of undergirding and enhancing the position of virgins in the church as brides of Christ, Hunter argues that Augustine used these texts in an alternate way to describe the church universal as the Bride to Christ as Bridegroom.16 Augustine does not reject the ascetic ideal but he does temper his contemporaries’ preference for virginity by focusing on Christ and the church as the primary relationship. Where Hunter sees Augustine’s conformation to the church as problematic, however, I see it as a positive point, because Augustine’s vision of the church is not merely or


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solely the institutional/hierarchical church; his ecclesiology is much broader. Augustine’s writing on this psalm is so filled with images of households and their reconfiguration in Christ such that it is clear by the end of the text that biological or in-law bonds never matter as much as the bond between Christian believers, in whom the true household may be seen.17 Moreover, it is because of this bond that Christians are formed morally to be the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the children of Christ, and the numerous other relationships with Christians bear both to each other and to their Lord and God. Augustine begins his exposition by calling the reader to be especially attentive, for this wedding psalm is about them and for them as the church. He preaches this sermon on the occasion of the restored. The gathered faithful to whom he is preaching are part of the wedding feast because ‘‘we are Christ’s children, because we are the children of the Bridegroom, and this psalm is written for us.’’ He proclaims: We have joyfully sung this psalm with you, and now I beg you to study it carefully with us. It is a song about a sacred marriage, about a bridegroom and his bride, a king and his people. Anyone who has arrived at this wedding properly dressed in wedding clothes (not to attract attention to himself or herself, but in honor of the Bridegroom) will not be content just to listen eagerly. This is what people ordinarily do when all they are looking for is entertainment, and they have no intention of letting what they see or hear affect their behavior.18 From the beginning, then, Augustine establishes that his exposition on this psalm involves both attention to praise of God and, therefore, attention to the ways in which they, as guests of God’s banquet, live. He addresses his exposition to the members of his congregation and beneath his delving into metaphorical interpretations of the psalm, one can also detect a note or two of exhortation, particularly to those members who are ‘‘ just looking for entertainment.’’19 The praise and the worship that the guests will give to Christ cannot be passive or ‘‘ just’’ entertainment. This wedding banquet is meant to transform lives and to engage people as participants, honored guests even, at God’s own table. Yet, paradoxically, Augustine says that ‘‘these invited guests are themselves the bride, for the Church is the bride, and Christ the Bridegroom. . . . The nuptial union is effected between the Word and human flesh, and the place where the union is consummated is the Virgin’s womb.’’20 This is the consummation that will shatter the hold of sin on the world. As he writes, ‘‘While

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she was still ugly, for, as the apostle says, All have sinned and are in need of the glory of God, and again, Christ died for the impious (Rom 3:23, 5:6). She was loved in her ugliness, that she might not remain ugly.’’21 Because the bride is the members of the church, we were ‘‘still ugly’’ when Christ came to marry us, but we were loved in that ugliness. Here Augustine makes somewhat oblique reference to humanity’s fallen state; the fallen state is counteracted by an amazing and new wedding between a divine and human man, and the church, composed of many members. No longer, then, is the bride/bridegroom relationship to be contained solely within the context of a man and a woman desiring to be married; it is fraught with the images of Christ as the bridegroom and the restoration of the broken relationship between men, women, and God, which Christ institutes. The eschatological marriage between Christ and the church ultimately and completely pieces together what we saw lost in the fall. As we saw in chapter 2, it was the male/female relationship that God restored in Jesus Christ, precisely so that we could practice obedience once more. Furthermore, in reconfiguring the very meaning of what it is to be married, we live out that restored relationship between men and women in the church, and even in the wedding banquet (the Eucharist) itself. No longer, too, can the bride/bridegroom relationship be seen as a private relationship only vaguely connected to the public sphere. At the wedding feast, says Augustine, we are gifted with new identities and new ways of acting and being, through God’s grace. He proclaims: ‘‘Each one of us is being changed from an old self into a new self, from an unbeliever into a believer, from a thief into a generous giver, from an adulterer into a chaste person, from a spiteful troublemaker into a kindly neighbor. So let the psalm be sung for us, for those things which will be changed; and now let him be delineated through whom the changes are brought about.’’22 We Christians who are also the bride have already been pushed into new relationships, which no longer bear exact reference to the old relationships we had. Our relationships with each other take on an ever-expanding character, especially in the context of the church and its liturgical feasts.

Sacrament and Sacramentality of the Households If God is the all-encompassing end toward which all creation tends, the expansive character of the household does not end with a reordering of familial relationships in the church. The character of the household ends only at the eschaton, which final reality we cannot know at this time. It is much the same with sacraments. Twentieth-century theologian Herbert McCabe suggests that


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the Christian’s best answer to what the kingdom of God will finally be like is in its sacraments, and he takes that from the Eucharistic images in the Gospel of John: ‘‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.’’23 Daily households are not done away with in the light of becoming Christians; those daily households themselves are caught up in this reconfiguration. Households have sacramental character and may thus be intertwined with the church’s own sacramental life.24 Thus they are part of the present and the time that is to come.

Temporal and Eternal Things How is it that the household can be both part of this world and also something radically new? Liturgy has both an eternal and a temporal character, which is part of its eschatological nature. Liturgical and sacramental life gives Christians participation in the eternal even while it exists in this temporal world. This paradox is also true of the Christian household. Just as households reach their breaking point in the presence of Christ such that names like ‘‘mother’’ and ‘‘father’’ take on a highly radical character, so too do other ‘‘ordinary’’ elements like bread and water. Whenever Augustine speaks of the ordinary elements of life, he is doing so with the recognition that, in view of the Christian understanding of salvation, these elements describe both a temporal and an eternal reality. That is, both the daily household of which we are a part and the Household of God occupied in praise and worship experience that curious eschatological paradox of ‘‘already/not yet.’’ The things on this earth are mixed with the things of heaven, and it is not until the eschaton that these shall be separated. Thus, for example, in Augustine’s eloquent poem Psalmus contra Partem Donati, he draws upon the metaphor Jesus uses for the kingdom of heaven, of a net cast into the sea. After the net was dragged to shore, the fishermen put the good fish in jars but threw the bad fish back into the sea. Augustine proclaims: ‘‘Let him who understands the Gospel consider this with fear. He sees that the net is the Church and the world is the sea. The mixed draught of fishes is the admixture of the righteous with sinners. The shore is the end of the world and then comes the time of separation. Those who first broke the net loved the world over-much.’’25 It is in this context that we may see the importance of Augustine’s beginning explorations into sacramental theology. Augustine suggests that elements in the temporal realm and the eternal are mixed, showing up in the church’s liturgy by way of physical signs manifesting an eternal reality but also showing up in the characterization of such an everyday thing like the households of which we are a part. In Sermon 227,

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Augustine offers an instruction on the Eucharist to neophytes at his church, discussing the connection between the ordinary elements and their eternal meaning: By this bread is inculcated the lesson of how you ought to love unity. Surely this bread was not made of one grain. Were there not many grains of wheat? Before they were made into bread, they were separate grains: but after the grinding they were joined together by means of water. For unless the wheat is ground, and then kneaded together by means of water, it cannot become what we call bread.26 Augustine likens this physical sign of the bread to the newly baptized, who are also joined together, by water, to become bread for the world. He writes further in De Doctrina Christiana that ‘‘the Lord himself and the apostolic tradition gave only a few signs instead of many, and these same signs are simple to perform.’’27 Here, as we saw earlier in Augustine’s metaphorical use of marriage and family, such signs as bread and water become reconfigured to be part of the Christian story. Augustine tells us that the God Christians thirst after is not at all like anything we encounter in our daily world, and yet, strangely enough, God is present there, in humble beginnings and in ordinary life. This is a theme that he returns to again and again, for example, in his influential Confessions. In part of his initial prayer in the Confessions, Augustine writes to God: How many of our days and days of our fathers have passed during your Today and have derived from it the measure and condition of their existence? And others too will pass away and from the same source derive their existence. ‘‘But you are the same’’; and all tomorrow and hereafter, and indeed all yesterday and further back, you will make a Today, you have made a Today.28 This situation presents something of a paradox (in human terms) for Augustine, as he ponders how it is that God is ‘‘always active, always in repose, gathering to yourself but not in need, supporting and filling and protecting . . . you love without burning, you are jealous in a way that is free of anxiety, you ‘repent’ (Gen. 6:6) without the pain of regret, you are wrathful and remain tranquil. You will a change without any change in your design.’’29 The God whom Augustine confesses is therefore not human or creaturelike in any sense; this is why he struggles so much with how it is that God, who is eternal, can even remotely reside in him, who is temporal. ‘‘Where may he come to me? Lord my God, is there any room in me which can contain you? Can heaven and earth, which you have made and in which you have made me, contain you?’’30


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Augustine invites God to abide and rest in him, even though he knows the language is paradoxical. The language Augustine uses to speak of God and creature, and eternal and temporal things, turns quickly to language of abiding, dwellings, and abodes. Augustine even uses the analogy of himself as a ‘‘room’’ in which God might dwell. Augustine seeks rest in God’s abiding, as though it were Augustine abiding in God. We see this suggestion from the famous quotation that sets up Confessions from its beginnings: ‘‘Our heart is restless until finds it rests in you.’’31 Two points follow from this observation. First is to remark how immediately Augustine’s confessions of his own human need and his knowledge of God lead to talk of abiding, of rooms, and houses. It is one of the motifs of this particular work that appears again and again, in variation. Later in I.v, 6, for instance, Augustine describes his soul as a ‘‘house’’ in need of restoration. At the very end of the work, Augustine returns explicitly to the theme of temporal versus eternal things, and engages in a full discussion of the distinction even as he speaks of our ‘‘habitation’’ in God, especially via God’s creation of heaven and earth; he again brings up how it is that we rest and abide in God; he concludes with words from Matthew’s gospel about knocking on God’s door in order to beg from God understanding that is not ours to grasp.32 For Augustine, homes, dwellings, and habitations take on multiple meanings. Homes are one of the many ordinary physical signs we experience on this earth, through which we come to know and understand God and our own selves.33 Second, and related, his discussion of abiding, rooms, and houses very quickly becomes broader than simply his own ‘‘house’’ (as soul) in relation to God. Here again we see reconfiguration and expansion of relationships, this time between the soul and God. Yet Augustine also recognizes the people who inhabit the dwelling with him and thus sees an expansion in human relationships,34 particularly in relation to the church. It is no accident that the final book of the Confessions is a discussion about the church and its members in relation to Genesis 1:1 and following. This book provides a sweeping symbolic account of the creation narrative in Genesis in relation to the Trinity and the church that God has established in Christ. He says, ‘‘In your name we are baptized, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; in your name, we baptize, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Among us also in his Christ God has made a heaven and an earth, meaning the spiritual and carnal members of his Church.’’35 In the passage that immediately follows this one, the church is connected with God’s own habitation as well as with the heavenly city. The creation narrative in which heaven and earth were created is here refigured eschatologically, as a new heaven and earth that becomes God’s habitation through the church, which becomes the new household for humans.

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Augustine describes the church in relation to creation, and hence to the physical world that gives us the signs by which we participate in the Body of Christ. In created things, we are given the means by which we can rightly know and worship God. We are made in the image of God, rather than ‘‘after our own kind’’ as other living things were made. Augustine notes that this image has been restored after the fall because we have been ‘‘renewed in the knowledge of God after the image of him who created him’’ (cf. Col. 3:10); he sees that because of Christ, we have been given power and dominion over the earth, which is power to judge all things (cf. 1 Cor. 2:15).36 The power to judge only extends to the creatures on earth and the related elements, however. We, who have been made in the image of God, may not judge those things residing in the heavens, or that the scriptures are true, or other human beings in terms of who is to be counted in the eternal city or the temporal city. These, Augustine leaves to God to judge. Yet because humans have been given dominion over the water, the earth, the fishes of the sea, and every living creation, we do have authority to interpret the scriptures and the actions of others. Such authority resides in the church and its people. Augustine says that the church ‘‘ judges and approves what is right and disapproves what is wrong, whether in the solemn rite of the sacraments at the initiation of those whom your mercy searches out ‘in many waters,’ or in that rite celebrated when there is offered the Fish.’’37Here, Augustine speaks of the rites and sacraments of the church. These are physically attainable (sounds, touches, smells, tastes) because we live in the abyss and darkness of a world that does not know God, except that God is incarnate and made present to us in such earthly things as water, bread, and wine. Augustine immediately follows this discussion of the church’s sacraments and rites with further delineation of what may be judged by the church: The spiritual person also judges by approving what is right and disapproving what he finds wrong in the works and behaviour of the faithful in their charitable giving—like the fruitful earth. He judges the ‘‘living soul’’ in its affections made gentle by chastity, by fasting, by devout reflection on things perceived by the bodily senses. And lastly he is said to exercise judgement on questions where he possesses a power of correction.38 Again, he speaks of visible, physical signs of faithful living, and they are juxtaposed with the physical signs of the church in its sacraments. Significantly, Augustine suggests that the church may only pass judgment on ‘‘the faithful’’ and their patterns for living, those who have already received the sacraments he describes previously. In Augustine’s understanding of the


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world’s ordering, then, it is the church that gives birth to and feeds the ways in which its faithful members live out their daily lives. God has ordered the world so that we may first be renewed in Christ and then, knowing that renewal, may live ordered lives in Christ. Augustine sees that these visible signs are the way of being more human and more like the creatures that God intended us to be. Only through these signs may we men and women truly obey God’s command to ‘‘be fruitful and multiply.’’ In this, we Christians have a new way to obey the original commandments God has given. As Augustine claims: Only in signs given corporeal expression and in intellectual concepts do we find an increasing and a multiplying which illustrate how one thing can be expressed in several ways. . . . That is why we believe that you, Lord addressed both categories [physical and intellectual generation] in the words ‘‘increase and multiply.’’ By this blessing I understand you to grant us the capacity and ability to articulate in many ways what we hold to be a single concept, and to give a plurality of meanings to a single obscure expression in a text we have read.39 The physical signs are the means by which we are fruitful and multiply in our intellect, which lead us to turn toward God, whom we seek to understand and know, and in whom we hope to live because the Body of Christ is our ‘‘habitation from heaven’’ (2 Cor. 5:2).40 The church, in its sacraments and its judgment of the faithful, is therefore always offering a prefiguring of our last end in God. Augustine here shows how, in Christ, the commandment that men and women can only follow God together attains a different kind of fulfillment. Again, the households of which we are a part become reconfigured; here, however, the reconfiguration concerns God’s commandment to man and woman at creation and shows itself in the church’s sacramental practice through physical signs. These signs include the daily households of which we are part, but also the food and water, and other physical signs that we have in those homes, but which are given new understanding in the liturgical practice of the church. These are, in turn, bound up with moral formation. Elsewhere, Augustine says: Begin, though, by living good lives to practice in a spiritual way what Christ illustrated by the resurrection of the body. . . . Now, for the time being, let us work hard in the vineyard, looking forward to the end of the day; the one who hired us to work, you see, doesn’t

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christians’ eschatological home abandon us, doesn’t let us faint. The one who is preparing to give the laborer his wages at the end of the day provides him with food while he’s working. So too the Lord is now providing us with food as we work in this world. . . . Christ gives himself to his workers, he provides himself as daily bread, he saves himself up as wages. We’ve no grounds for saying, ‘‘If we eat him now, what will we get at the end of the day?’’ We indeed eat, but he isn’t finished.41

The ‘‘good lives’’ we are asked to live are fueled and nurtured by Christ’s own bread, which we have now and which we shall continue to have at the eschaton. Augustine’s focus here is on the present, in-between reality, which we have in both the sacraments of the church and in the sacramentality of our households. All the physical signs come together to incorporate Christians, no matter their state of life, into the Household of God, as the primary household, an utterly transformed version of a household that is mapped onto the daily households of which we are a part. This utter transformation takes place even in this world, though the fullness of that transformation cannot be realized until the time when God will be in all things.

Conclusions: Using Eschatology in Household Theology Augustine’s thoughts about reconfigured households have two implications for contemporary theology. The first is to see that just as marriage and various states of singleness are threaded together through salvation history, so do these states join together eschatologically. The second implication is that we ought to reconsider the names we give to ‘‘states of life.’’ We, as members of the Household of God, should not imagine ourselves as separate either from being married or from being single, and we must live as both, in our lives as members of Christ’s body.

States of Life Bound Together As we have seen in previous chapters, Christians have most often affirmed the high place of eschatology in view of vowed nonmarried people over against marriage. Writers working on virginity often find it necessary to begin with the redemption and example we have in Christ or with the eschatological fulfillment Christ brings, rather than consider creation. Indeed, in the terms in which the arguments for celibacy are laid out, why think of creation at all? Virginity and celibacy are new ways ‘‘in which the human creature adheres wholly and


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directly to the Lord, and is concerned only with Him and with His affairs; thus, he manifests in a clearer and more complete way the profoundly transforming reality of the New Testament.’’42 In Sacerdotalis caelibatus, Paul VI relies heavily on eschatological language to describe the role of the priest in relation to celibacy: ‘‘In the community of the faithful committed to his charge, the priest represents Christ. Thus, it is most fitting that in all things he should reproduce the image of Christ and in particular follow His example, both in his personal and in his apostolic life.’’43 The priest’s celibacy is connected to the image of Christ, which directs the Christian’s vision toward the new reality of God’s kingdom. Marriage, however, is clearly consigned to this life and has no mark of beatific vision.44 On the contrary side, theologians tend to speak of marriage largely in terms of creation only. Yet if we speak only of creation in relation to marriage, we miss some of the richness that the church fathers bring to bear on marriage. The Eastern fathers, in particular, have much to say about marriage as being already part of and inseparable from sacramental life. John Chrysostom proclaims, ‘‘When husband and wife are united in marriage, they are no longer seen as something earthly, but as the image of God Himself.’’45 Clement of Alexandria suggests, ‘‘But who are the two or three gathered in the name of Christ in the midst of whom the Lord is? Does He not by the two mean husband and wife?’’46 Contemporary Eastern theologians have taken to heart these writings of the church fathers, alongside such texts as the wedding at Cana, Paul’s reference to Christ and the church in Ephesians 5:32, and the wedding feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9) in the Apocalypse of John, and they have seen marriage more as part of the underpinnings of theology than is generally done in the West. Paul Evdokimov discusses the meaning of the crowning rite in the East, for example, by pointing out the rite’s use of Psalm 127: ‘‘The Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life.’’47 Marriage means, in part, being bound up in service to God in the heavenly Jerusalem, and thus the crowning of the couple ‘‘raises the bridal pair above the horizons of the earth. It teaches the steadfast and only true nuptial attitude: at every moment, ‘every day of his life,’ man on earth looks to the East; through his roots his joy drinks from heaven.’’48 Marriage is part of the eschatological feast, which is also the Eucharistic meal. As I have suggested earlier, Augustine, like the church fathers in the East, has a sense of the Parousia that extends to a vision of marriage, virginity, and households in this life. This is precisely the point the Western church has lost or obscured over the centuries, and it has been detrimental. Speaking in terms of Western Christian attitudes toward marriage and eschatology, theologian David Cloutier has rightly argued

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christians’ eschatological home that when Christianity has affirmed marriage, it has done so in terms borrowed (not uncontroversially) from its host culture and in terms of what is ‘‘natural’’ for all humans. . . . However, the mandate to treat topics in moral theology in a way that will ‘‘shed light on the loftiness of the calling of the faithful in Christ and the obligation that is theirs of bearing fruit in charity for the life of the world,’’ points the way to an alternative approach, in which sexuality and the lofty calling to the Kingdom are not simply kept separate.49

Cloutier suggests that many contemporary Catholic writers manifest this shift by moving away from seeing marriage as good and as a created reality with virginity being the counter-way-of-life that embodies the kingdom, toward seeing it as a ‘‘non-instrumental good’’ with ‘‘eschatological capacities.’’50 John Paul II is one of the former, seeing marriage as a natural reality that can have fulfillment on earth but does not have eschatological capacity. Familiaris consortio speaks of beginning and final fulfillment: ‘‘Willed by God in the very act of creation, marriage and the family are interiorly ordained to fulfillment in Christ and have need of His graces in order to be healed from the wounds of sin and restored to their ‘beginning,’ that is, to full understanding and the full realization of God’s plan.’’51 This sounds promising, eschatologically speaking, but John Paul II later suggests: Virginity or celibacy, by liberating the human heart in a unique way . . . bears witness that the kingdom of God and his justice is that pearl of great price which is to be preferred to every other value no matter how great, and hence must be sought as the only definitive value. It is for this reason that the church throughout her history as always defended the superiority of this charism to that of marriage by reason of the wholly singular link which it has with the kingdom of God.52 That is, marriage is restored to its beginning, unspoiled nature but does not have any participation in the greater fulfillment promised eschatologically. Marriage bears no function beyond this world, which is supported by such scriptural texts as Matthew 22:30, where people will not be married or be given in marriage. John Paul II’s view is confusing, moreover, because it is not clear how marriage can both be responsible for contributing to ‘‘the coming of his kingdom in the world’’ and yet not also point toward it, ontologically.53 Yet if my conclusions in this book are correct, that marriage and various single states of life must be seen in tandem or else we do not understand what the Household of God is, we cannot say that marriage means nothing escha-


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tologically, nor can we be overly lofty with considerations of singleness lest we avoid the implications regarding the eschaton, daily life, and liturgy. Augustine’s eschatological thought suggests that in fact the life of the Household of God so confounds non-Christian worldviews of households that there must be a radical new conception of those households. While Augustine does make distinctions between households, and while he suggests that certain states of singleness (like vowed virginity) might, depending on the grace and virtue present, lead to a more powerful union between the soul and God, the fact that the Christian’s household becomes so completely reconfigured in light of the Household of God means that both marriage and states of singleness have some connection to the end of time. What Augustine’s theology ought to suggest to other theologians is that, like the sacraments that point only partially to a reality, the various Christian households also point partially to a reality. Both marriage and virginity point toward humanity’s eschatological future, but they do so because of their relationship with the Body of Christ as a whole. Marriage, like celibacy, can be a life directed toward holiness and a life directed toward a perfect end in God. Jesus the Virgin, who is also the Bridegroom, combines all our states into one, into his Body. Because Christ has redeemed us, but more important, because we know that all things will be drawn back to God eschatologically, human relationships with God and each other expand to include both marriage and virginity and other single states of life. This expansion happens in and through the life of the church, particularly in its liturgy, and in and through baptism. There cannot be the mind-set that there is either virginity or marriage and that these stand in great opposition to each other because of sex, the resultant ability to focus on Christ, and the like. We know this, and we experience this first and foremost in the church’s liturgy, where, as Augustine reminds us, we are all children of God and brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, of each other because we have been baptized. The church uses such images as Mary as mother, church as mother, Jesus as brother, to convey just how fluid is the Christian concept of familial households. Moreover, all these states of life take on a different character precisely because of Mary and Jesus, both of whom are married virgins and through whom the church is instituted. The imagery surrounding the family changes and becomes much larger when the church’s life is held out first and foremost. In the church and especially in the liturgy, bridal and marital imagery is turned on its head when it is related to the Parousia and then reflected back to us through the liturgy and the lives we lead in marriage or singleness. Eugene Rogers suggests this when he writes, ‘‘Marriage in Christianity is best

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understood as an ascetic practice of and for the community by which God takes sexuality up into God’s own triune life, graciously transforming it so as to allow the couple partially to model the love between Christ and the Church.’’54 Paul Evdokimov suggests, along similar lines, that marriage is a form of monasticism because it also involves the same monastic vows, and also because both monks and married witness to the kingdom.55 Both married and unmarried are unified, through the Household of God, in their purposes of glorifying God and looking toward each other’s final happiness in God’s kingdom. The Household of God refers to the church. In Ephesians, Paul writes, ‘‘So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.’’56 In his first letter to Timothy, Paul refers more directly to the church as Household: ‘‘If I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.’’57 Human relationships with God expand to become the church, which is often (though not solely) named as the ‘‘Household of God.’’ The relationships between humans that result from this one Household might be more properly named households themselves. It is because of these reconfigured understandings of marriage and family that there is room for other states of life; these relationships, as Augustine describes them, are not families, at least not in the ‘‘traditional’’ sense.58 The very idea of family expands because of Christ’s Body. Thus it is that Augustine writes paradoxically in a Christmas sermon: ‘‘Born of his mother, he commended this day to the ages, while born of his Father, he created all ages. That birth could have no mother, while this one required no man as father. To sum up, Christ was born both of a Father and of a mother; both without a father and without a mother; of a Father as God, or a mother as man.’’59

Describing Christian States of Life The imagery of households at the eschaton, and even of the in-between times, is thus expansive and even explosive because the very incarnation of Christ causes a distinct reordering of the world. We know this in the Household of God, as I have suggested earlier; we also can begin to know this reality in our small households. The implication of this eschatological vision of marriage and nonmarriage as intertwined means that states of life cannot be delineated into two rather simple categories of marriage and vowed celibacy. Once again, states of life and their resultant households become more expansive when they are caught up in Jesus’ own life, in part because the focus is on Christ and the relationship we have with others in Christ. Our failure to recognize this new


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status of households leads in the opposite direction toward some of the contemporary problems mentioned in chapter 1. So, for example, the problem with contemporary overfascination with marriage in particular not only leads to the kind of dichotomizing I mention in chapter 1 but also overtakes the primacy of the Christian’s relationship with Christ and other Christians. Yet Augustine’s observations on households indicate that the contemporary view has not always existed nor necessarily need exist for proper theological understanding of households. The problem is not with the delineation of states of life, as such. Distinctions in states of life can still be made so long as they do not detract from the unity of Christians in the Household. Paul’s counsel to people to take on ‘‘voluntary continence’’ in 1 Corinthians 7 is not meant to divide Christians to the point that a holy life of virginity is so odd and distant from a holy life of marriage that people appear to be living in separate worlds. Indeed, Paul’s primary point in the whole of his letter to the Corinthians is to encourage them not to have divisions (1:10–11), and that Christians be united ‘‘in the same mind and in the same purpose.’’ Or as John Paul II suggests in his papal addresses on the family, Paul sees both marriage and virginity (as a chosen state of life) as gifts from God that enable us to live in God’s kingdom.60 In its own eschatological and sacramental life, the church as Bride and Virgin and Mother knows that these gifts of states of life are meant to promote unity, for all of these find their unity in the church. Paul’s injunction to Christians in 1 Corinthians 7 does, however, pinpoint another, more important, source of the problem, which is a question of the orientation of human desires. The distinction between someone who is married and someone who is unmarried, on Paul’s view, is between the virgin who can be completely oriented toward ‘‘the affairs of the Lord’’ and seek to please only the Lord and the married person who must be concerned with the relationship with God as well as the relationship with his or her spouse. On Paul’s view, the orientation of desire is therefore split between humans and God. As we have seen elsewhere in this book, some theologians like Jerome saw this split in desire as inherently difficult, so that marriage was not even seen as a good because the married person’s desires could not be completely oriented toward God. One question to raise is whether Paul makes sense on his point about married versus unmarried orientation to God, for people who have chosen unmarried continence do not automatically have their desires any more oriented toward God than anyone else. John Paul II and others are careful to mention the factor of choice and consent when it comes to marriage and continence, so that what makes a marriage valid, for example, is the idea of

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consent. Those who have chosen a state of continence are, on the pope’s account, the ones to whom Paul’s comments refer, and they are the ones who can be anxious about God’s affairs.61 Those who find themselves haphazardly single do not fall into this category. Consider, moreover, that the idea of choice and consent itself conveys a particular understanding about how the Christian ought to live and ought to orient himself or herself toward God. It is not the case that one begins to live a Christian life of holiness only when a choice has been made for marriage or for celibacy. On the contrary, that choice is part of the Christian’s entire orientation toward God, desire for God, and desire to do God’s will, so that ultimately it is not really a onetime choice or decision made on the part of the Christian but rather an acceptance God’s own will and desire. This orientation toward God and reflection on desire relate strongly to Augustine’s theology of virtue and holiness and his idea of seeking humanity’s true happiness. As Augustine reminds people in his treatise on holy virginity, those who are humble and married are far better than those who are virginal but have the vice of pride,62 because the state of life in itself is not an ultimate descriptor of someone who strives for friendship with God. Thus, the Christian’s ‘‘state of life’’ is better named as a state of virtue, a life lived toward the eschaton and ultimate friendship with God, in which marriage and virginity are part of living out that life.

6 The Political Household of God Against the Public/Private Dichotomy

The church offers a form of life into which Christians are baptized and invited to share. Thus far, I have argued that the sacramental image of households, as well as the eschatological image of households, is a vision of Christians united in a completely reconfigured and unified household in Christ. This vision of Christian households operates partly now, because we see glimpses of this reconfigured household, but it is also a future vision of the Parousia, when God will be all-in-all. The Household of God and its constituent, small households are concerned with the entirety of that reality; there is no part of the old life, theologically speaking, that can remain if the new life is to take hold. As Christ says, ‘‘And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’’1 The Household of God is a new wineskin, a place to put the new wine of the reality in which Christ confronts us. This new view of the world (this New Creation) is crucial for understanding the question raised at the beginning of this book about the relationship between the church and households. The dichotomies that rise again and again in theology of marriage are shattered. We have already seen that the male/female dichotomy cannot stand because salvation history does not tell of opposition between male and female, but speaks instead of relationship between male and female. This relationship between male and female is not limited, however, to marriage and a focus on that couple (and particularly

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not focused on the couple’s sex life as we might be prone to thinking), but is instead directed outward, to its ultimate purpose in God and other human relationships. Thus, the dichotomy between marriage and singleness also falls apart, not least of which is because Christ himself becomes both married and virgin. The Christian, by virtue of being caught up in Christ’s own life, death, and resurrection via baptism, confronts a new reality of what it means to be male and female, married and virgin. (And, as I noted in chapter 4, Augustine appears even to incorporate other states of singleness.) The previous chapter suggested many of the ways in which this new reality manifests in the life of the church, and especially via the sacrament of baptism. The eschatological character of the Household of God points us toward a new way of seeing the public/private dichotomy mentioned in chapter 1, as well. I suggested in that chapter that the public/private distinction often comes across as cordoning off the household and religion from affairs deemed to be proper to the common good, namely, economics and the state. Thus, households and religion seem somehow apolitical themselves, even while individual households, particularly married households, are conceived in relation to the nation-state, to the point that they appear dismembered, cut off from their place in salvation history and their relationship to the church in that context. On this view, the nation-state bears the primary responsibility for determining exactly what constitutes a household, and how that household must relate to other institutions including the church. Don Browning and other scholars have generally supported this view by suggesting ways that religion might contribute to the state’s deliberations about households. I suggest, however, that if Christ and his church are determinative for household formation in the ways I have shown thus far, we need to rethink ‘‘public,’’ ‘‘private,’’ and ‘‘political’’ in relation to households. In the household of the church, for example, there can be no public/ private distinction, particularly because of its worship; this household forms people to be public witnesses of Christ’s own life and to live in a peculiarly Christian manner. This sacramental expansion of the household occurs on many levels and is precisely why it is better to use ‘‘households’’ rather than ‘‘families’’ to describe human relationships in the context of the Parousia. In this chapter, therefore, I continue the themes from the previous chapter by showing further how Christ reconfigures households and what this means ecclesiologically. It is not simply human interrelationships that are reconfigured, but Christ even transforms institutional relationships, which has bearing on how households are understood. First, I discuss the idea of the ‘‘political’’ and the ‘‘nation-state’’ with regard to contemporary theology, suggesting ways in which politics have been reconceived and, especially, how

the political household of god

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households have fit into this reconceptualization. Most contemporary work on politics and theology has largely overlooked considerations of households, however, so I then suggest how Augustine’s writing on politics helps us consider households. I conclude by examining some of Augustine’s writing in The City of God and show how an Augustinian vision of eschatology reshapes how we might think of households and the Household of God politically.

The ‘‘Private Sphere’’ as Political The primacy of the nation-state’s relationship with households has long been recognized. When recounting the history of marriage or sexuality, for example, one might well begin with an account of the development of marriage under Roman or Greek law in the West. James Brundage, for example, traces the beginnings of codification of sexual behavior, and therefore some definition of marriage, at least to the Code of Hammurabi, where adultery by the woman was punishable by drowning.2 Other scholars begin with conversation about the nation-state, the common good, or the public welfare, and provide accounts of how laws of an empire, state or nation affect and influence the institution of marriage. This focus on the relationship between households and the state is not a negative move in and of itself, for theological implications can be made on the basis of Genesis, certain conceptions of natural law, and the idea of a common ordering of humanity. We can still likely conceive of something that looks appropriately theologically ordered when we focus on Genesis and natural law. Nonetheless, such a reversion does not account enough for the richness of imagery and the complexity of the entire household that emerges through the death and resurrection of Christ. It especially and most crucially does not account for the baptismal community of the faithful that I discussed in the previous chapter: those who are named children and heirs of God, the Motherhood of the church and of Mary, the Fatherhood of God, the Sonship of Jesus, the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, the church as Bride, Christ as Bridegroom, the church as taking part in a wedding banquet. Because of Christ, human relationships are reordered. The church has, at times, recognized that the significance of its claims about marriage and singleness means that it ought to be more than a bit suspicious of how the state dictates what ‘‘family’’ is. For example, we can consider Pope Leo XIII’s claim: Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the

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christians’ eschatological home subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church.3

Leo finds such ‘‘civil marriages’’ to be contrary to Christian sensibilities; marriage, he proclaims, has never been given over to the powers of the state, and therefore divorce (the focus of this encyclical) is not under the state’s jurisdiction either. Leo XIII acknowledges, however, that the church has the responsibility to consider the upbuilding of the state, given that ‘‘God intended [marriage] to be a most fruitful source of individual benefit and of public welfare.’’4 As one of the first popes needing to confront modern state politics, and especially in the aftermath of losing temporal power, it is significant that Leo positions the church here not as a private institution, nor as a separate-butequal public institution, but as an entity responsible for a particular theological vision. The task of the church, then, is to maintain that theological vision, even if it conflicts with the state. The church has its own politic that is not dependent on the state and Leo clearly states that the church will be no handmaiden to nation-state affairs. Politics and the church must be considered alongside the question of households because of recent scholarship concerning the church as political. Theologians such as William Cavanaugh have pointed out, for example, modernity’s overemphasis on the state as social salvation.5 John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas have taken to task the false assumption that the church is a private affair, unengaged in the public, political lives of people who consider themselves to be, first and foremost, citizens of a nation-state, and secondarily as Christians. For Christians, the task is not to determine the political theory most conducive to Christianity and thereby act according to the assumption that the Christian church is obsolete where political institutions are concerned. Thus Stanley Hauerwas writes concerning prayer as a practice of the church, ‘‘I urge Christians to learn to pray authentically as Christians. For if Christians reclaim prayer as an end in itself rather than a way to confirm the ‘Christian nature’ of our society, we will perform our most important civic responsibility.’’6 The church is not, therefore, part of a separate sphere from the modern political arena. While for modernity it seems that, as William Cavanaugh says, ‘‘politics, therefore, is enacted on the stage of the state, the one truly public space,’’7 the church converses in its own political language, but this conversation is not staged in the language of modernity and modernity’s politics.


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Theologians like Yoder and Hauerwas tend to treat the church as political over against the state, which is one of the conversations that must be had. At the same time, however, that which is considered domestic, relating to households, rarely enters the conversation. Yet households, too, must come into the discussion whenever the church is mentioned for, as Bernd Wannenwetsch has noted, the church bears the strange character of being a place of alternate citizenship that yet incorporates the household. He writes, ‘‘Where fewer and fewer spheres are available where people can meet with family and political life, the Church (which must always be both a family and a political sociality) is challenged to keep these forms of life in view as open to experience.’’8 On Wannenwetsch’s view, households develop Christian worship life, which is itself political. Households necessarily become political in the church, because they become part of a life actively lived in Christ. Wannenwetsch makes a highly intriguing point but does not follow through with his conclusions about households in the subsequent chapters of his book. He chooses instead to focus much more on the act of worship. In his book Theology and Social Theory, John Milbank provides another foray into the church as political and also domestic, though he, too, does not carry the discussion of households as far as he might. He begins by making some of the same arguments I have suggested here. He critiques the notion of the ‘‘secular’’ as a separately created space from theology by claiming that, in fact, much in modern and postmodern scholarship carries with it a latent theology. Theologians, and the church itself, need not borrow from other disciplines for insight on Christianity’s own character, as is often the case in the contemporary era, but theology may itself describe the character of other human societies in relation to itself. Theology does so by telling a story, using ‘‘metanarrative realism’’ to describe a ‘‘counter-history,’’ a ‘‘counter-ethics,’’ and a ‘‘counter-ontology.’’9 For Milbank, this metanarrative requires looking again at Augustine’s work, particularly The City of God, as a text from within the Christian tradition, grounded in the Bible, and therefore able to describe both Christianity and the secular world. Via Augustine, Milbank contends that the church is a polis or civitas and therefore a ‘‘political reality.’’10 Though much of its language and early selfdescription11 had roots in Greek and Roman philosophy and political thought, the church is far different from the polis that ancient Greek philosophers described. Plato and Aristotle saw that the polis had as its end the development of virtue; the domestic sphere was not a place where virtue could be fully cultivated. In the ancient world, women, slaves, and children were unable to cultivate the virtuous life by the very fact of where they were located in society. However, on Milbank’s view Augustine narrated that the pagan conceptions of polis and virtue

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were neither true polis nor true virtue. Instead, the church holds the distinction of fostering true polis and virtue because Christian virtue is not rooted in or concerned for heroic excellence but ‘‘divine love and grace.’’12 Milbank thereby creates a space in which politics in light of the church becomes differently defined. He suggests that a key distinction between the ancient notion of politics and the church’s notion is the idea that in the church, the antinomy between polis and oikos is overcome. Thus Milbank can write, ‘‘Every household is now a little republic . . . and the republic itself is a household, including women, children, slaves as well as adult males.’’13 The church is both household and republic, generating itself in the birth of baptism and aligning itself with the City of God. No longer, then, is the political or the social relegated solely to the polis, and the Christian finds herself living in a strange new world in which the old relationships no longer hold or even make sense. Bernd Wannenwetsch has likewise argued for unanimity of oikos and polis, seeing as well that the church holds them in tension, as the kingdom of God and the Household of God. He displays great care, however, concerning the use of the word ‘‘political’’ in relation to the church, and any subsequent consideration of ‘‘political’’ with respect to households. Wannenwetsch observes, ‘‘Milbank subtracts the question of the church’s relationship as polis to the existing political community almost entirely from the question about possible behaviour towards that community.’’14 He sees that on Milbank’s view, the church has degenerated into a human institution among other human institutions, one that was called by God to practice a politics of peace, but one that acceded to the world’s violent politics instead. The task would be thus to encourage the church to reject those places where it has taken up the world’s violent politics, but Wannenwetsch argues instead for a more encompassing political worldview in the church’s worship. Wannenwetsch is right to critique Milbank on these points as regards the world as polis, but a similar critique may be made for families. The church’s relationship as oikos to existing communities is also removed from the question of behavior when it is viewed as distinct from worship. For Wannenwetsch the politics the church inscribes is centered on its practice of worship, which is instituted by God, whereby oikos and polis are overcome. Antiquity’s separation of polis and oikos is overcome because what is political spills over to what is domestic; the scriptural household codes (Haustafeln) are but one example that shows that, whereas in ancient times the oikos was dismissed as a means of cultivating the good life, for early Christians, living the Christian life came precisely into homes. Moreover, Wannenwetsch argues against the idea that the church is simply helping establish good society by supporting those elements that make


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for that good society (for example, good families). In other words, there can be no conflation between the church and what is considered ‘‘public,’’ ‘‘society,’’ ‘‘civil society,’’ and ‘‘state.’’15 Humans become political creatures capable of acting in various publics, and formation happens with each of those publics. Wannenwetsch’s larger point, though, is that people become political creatures, and they are always becoming political creatures. His contention is that becoming political does not happen solely in households that consciously strive to make ‘‘good citizens’’ of children, nor does it happen simply as a result of being a citizen of a particular nation. Being a political person is not a mere role that one plays contrary to those times when one is a private person; rather, one is instilled into a particular political way of life. Because becoming Christian can only happen in Christian community, Christian formation already makes people political all of the time. As he suggests: ‘‘My own perception of a truly political public, however, starts from the assumption that men and women are not born [naturally] as political beings. . . . Since the Church, as the creation of the Holy Spirit, is the prime case of a self-constituting, non-instrumental public, it can be understood as . . . a matrix out of which the human being is born as a political being.’’16 Most particularly, this political formation and this new becoming happen pneumatologically, in the church, via its worship practices.

Politics and Worship Wannenwetsch’s arguments about political theology thus link us to the previous chapter and my considerations of eschatology and liturgy. Wannenwetsch agrees with Vigen Guroian that worship is where Christian ethics begins, and baptism, the sacrament that generates the Christian household, is a way to consider households and the church.17 My contention, via Augustine, is that the church is named the Household of God inseparably from the various households in which Christians find themselves because of the ways that worship and politics (and, hence, ethics) tie the two together. Related to this, I suggest that current theologies of marriage (and singleness, where this has been considered) have too often been made to connect to state politics and vague social programs while all but ignoring the Christological and ecclesiological concerns that are present for Christians. Just as Leo XIII suggested in 1880 that nation-states were wrongfully beginning to be determinative for marriage and family, so in the contemporary era we Christians are no less experiencing the state as a determinative factor for households. In some ways, we may be experiencing the state as much more of a determinative factor when we take into account the vast array of theologians, Catholic and Protestant, who

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are involved with the Religion, Culture, and Family Project with its clear connections to state concerns.18 Households are themselves political, but we do not often see that reality present in current theological thinking. I claim that if our arguments reside too much in the ‘‘political’’ in relation to the ‘‘public,’’ where these two terms are tied to the state, the public square, or society without respect to families and households, we do not then know the resources for celebrating the church’s liturgy and sacraments, nor do our quotidian households know that the church’s liturgy is, itself, an ethic that forms us into ways of life that reach to our homes. In other words, we cannot know all the ways that Christ reconfigures households without attention to the politics of the Household of God. The consideration of liturgy and politics in this chapter therefore adds further reflection on eschatology, for liturgical time is eschatological ‘‘time.’’ As the Second Vatican Council proclaims: ‘‘Our union with the Church in heaven is put into effect in its noblest manner especially in the sacred Liturgy, wherein the power of the Holy Spirit acts upon us through sacramental signs. Then, with combined rejoicing we celebrate together the praise of the divine majesty.’’19 Faithful attention to theological scholarship confirms what we know in liturgical practice. Hans Urs von Balthasar suggests, ‘‘Through revelation we come to realize that our restless heart understands itself only if it has already seen the love offered to it by the divine heart that breaks for us upon the Cross.’’20 Von Balthasar sees it is through God’s plan that gives way to the Son’s mission, which then generates the church’s witness and, subsequently, the Christian witness, and finally which ‘‘informs the entire structure of creation with its countless individual structures in space and time. Nature’s forms spring forth from creation, rising up and opening themselves in spirit and love to the infinity of fructifying grace.’’21 Creation is not, therefore, the first consideration in theology but the last; first, there is God’s will made known to us in Christ, without whom creation cannot be informed or ordered. Karl Barth makes a different but equally important point with respect to making a beginning with creation: we do not know what it means to be created except that we have faith already in Christ who has already come and already redeemed us.22 Such an understanding about eschatology is the case, too, with the various states of life that I have been describing. As I suggested in part II, the popular way to view marriage and virginity is to see that marriage has its referent in creation, while virginity has its in redemption (and Christ’s own virginity). Using Augustine’s vision, I have already shown these to be incorrect and problematic assumptions, but in this chapter, we see even further that the way to describe states of life for Christians is eschatologically. Marriage and virginity are intelligible for Christians only because we wait eschatologically for


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the Bridegroom, and we experience that eschatological vision in partial ways now, and especially via worship. Our worship forms us not merely as individuals but as a Household and a citizenry, so that we know and experience the reconfiguring of households that Christ instituted. The Roman Catholic Vatican II document Lumen gentium offers a clear connection with Christian worship life, especially baptism, when it declares: ‘‘The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated as a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, in order that through all those works which are those of the Christian man they may offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim the power of Him who has called them out of darkness into His marvelous light.’’23 The ‘‘spiritual house’’ described earlier is limited only by baptism and marked by particular works that are unique to Christians such that members of this holy household bear a precise responsibility in their covenant relationship to God in Christ. This house described here is an ecclesiological description of the church. There is a direct connection between this ‘‘spiritual’’ household and those other households in which we daily find ourselves. In chapter 11 of the same document, we read some striking parallels to the preceding statements about a particular kind of household, the family: From the wedlock of Christians there comes the family, in which new citizens of human society are born, who by the grace of the Holy Spirit received in baptism are made children of God, thus perpetuating the people of God through the centuries. The family is, so to speak, the domestic church. . . . Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect.24 Again, the document maintains baptism, and again this particular household bears the weight of the baptismal covenant received in God. This house, too, is limited by baptism but also makes vague reference to various ‘‘ways’’ in which Christians might live out their calling. That is, the document does not here describe how Christians might live out their call to perfect holiness. This household is also bound by the sacrament of marriage received by Christians, as well as the Eucharistic sacrament.25 If we look to what the document declares about people in other states of life, we find: In virtue of this catholicity each individual part contributes through its special gifts to the good of the other parts and of the whole church.

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christians’ eschatological home Through the common sharing of gifts and through the common effort to attain fullness in unity, the whole and each of the parts receive increase. Not only, then, are the people of God made up of different peoples but in its inner structure also it is composed of various ranks. This diversity among its members arises either by reason of their duties, as is the case with those who exercise the sacred ministry for the good of their brethren, or by reason of their condition and state of life, as is the case with those many who enter the religious state and, tending toward holiness by a narrower path, stimulate their brethren by their example.26

Lumen gentium sets forth a high view of the church, one that binds together all the baptized via their sacramental life together and their participation as members in the one body. Each state of life becomes a means of building up the Body of Christ. One image here is that no one part of the body can be separated from the others without loss of particular functions that the church offers. This is not merely a metaphorical connection to the daily households of which we are a part. If this were the case, we could simply assert that the church/household connection is an eschatologically hoped-for event that bears little or no connection to contemporary concerns. Indeed, given some of the ways in which I have already described theories and theologies of marriage, families, and singleness in this book, this is the condition in which we believe ourselves to be. However, eschatological claims have a curious way of being intertwined with present moral formation, and that which we think is relegated to a distant future is also tied inexorably to the present. Augustine helps us toward better understanding on these points, especially in his massive work The City of God, for it is in this work that he sets forth a distinction between a present and earthly city and a future, heavenly city that now only lives ‘‘by faith’’ but someday will ‘‘dwell in the fixed stability of its eternal seat.’’27 Yet even in his distinctions between these two cities, he suggests an intermingling between the two cities while we dwell in this life. The good life can be lived, through God’s grace and in union with the church’s own political life in worship, and this has its effect on daily life in small households.

Augustine’s Vision of the Political Household and Moral Formation The church’s worship is its own political life, and it forms people into that life and way of thinking, however imperfectly. This formation is not necessarily or


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even usually a one-to-one correlation. One worship service, no matter how artfully designed or liturgically correct or purposeful in its worship of God, is not very likely to affect peoples’ daily habits. A lifetime of worship, however, even of ‘‘bad worship’’ or ‘‘bad liturgy’’, incorporates a person into a certain way of life. The once-in-a-lifetime worship service merely makes the attendee a visitor; worship often and over long periods pushes the attendee over some threshold that makes him or her a member or, at least, not quite a mere visitor. A parallel is found in household rules: a visitor to a friend’s home might note that there are particular rules there: that one must remove shoes at the entryway, for example. The visitor would have to be told of this rule on the first visit, and would very likely need to be reminded again on a second visit and subsequent visits. This rule is not likely to extend to the visitor’s own household unless the visitor herself has been thinking of the need for such a rule and likes the way her friend’s household is run; so she might try to imitate the rule. A member of this household, however, who had grown up with this way of living, would not ordinarily need to be reminded; indeed, the practice might carry over in his visits to another household, and it becomes a habit done almost without thinking. Christians are not the first group of people to recognize the necessity of worship and households for forming people into particular ways of life; indeed, before Christians, Jews and even the ancient Romans with their practices of pietas had made deep connections to the worship of God and practice and formation at home. In an important essay about families in early Jewish and Christian traditions, John Barclay suggests one of the problems facing early Christians: It is not altogether clear how Christianity was to become embedded in [the domestic sphere]. Christian households had no Lares or Penantes before whom family members could express their solidarity by honoring the beneficent deities of the house. Nor, by contrast to Judaism, was it obvious where Christian belief should influence the customs of the house. . . . If Christians did not observe the Sabbath or Jewish festivals, where was their Christian tradition ‘‘ritualized’’ within the annual cycle of family life?28 Barclay raises a point about how various traditions inhabited the domestic sphere, but his question does not take up theological concerns, which offer a different conclusion. Augustine points us to a more distinctive answer to Barclay’s question. It is not the case that Christian tradition becomes ritualized within the household; such would make the household exactly the ‘‘domestic church’’ that

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contemporary theologians have posited, with all the attendant problems I have already mentioned. Instead, the household becomes ritualized within the church so that the church may be ritualized in the household. Augustine demonstrates this relationship via City of God, which is his treatise on cities and the political, as well as in numerous sermons.

Initial Considerations about The City of God My exposition of passages in Augustine’s Confessions in chapter 5 suggests some ways in which Augustine, toward the beginning of his writing career, noted a relationship between households and the Household of God. He continues this theme in The City of God, a later work that was undertaken in stages, in response to the invasion and fall of Rome. On its face, it tells the history of pagan societies juxtaposed with the history of the City of God, showing how the two cities (one earthly, one celestial) had their origins and discussing the consequences and implications of the fact that the City of God exists along with the earthly city. The work culminates in an eschatological vision of the two cities, suggesting their ultimate ends. Many scholars have seen a concern with politics and the state in this text; political theorists still refer to it as a text requiring deliberation, even if it does, at times, offer a quizzical assessment of the world from our contemporary point of view.29 It might therefore seem strange that I would suggest Augustine has a particular concern with households in this work and, moreover, that I see Augustine here supporting the idea of the polis and the oikos held in tension in the church. In contrast, Peter Brown, Robert Markus, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and John Milbank have all suggested that Augustine’s work more broadly concerns ‘‘secular space,’’ the ‘‘world,’’ or ‘‘human existence’’ in its entirety, conclusions that do not necessarily lead to discussions of households with respect to politics but nonetheless suggest different emphases on Augustine’s part. Michael Hollerich notes of Markus’s work, for instance, that ‘‘[on] the one hand, civitas terrena and civitas dei referred to historical, sociological and empirical realities, which could appropriately be identified as ‘state’ and ‘church.’ On the other hand, Augustine used the two cities to indicate eschatological realities which could not be neatly identified with actual earthly institutions.’’30 For Markus, the City of God was most completely realized eschatologically, and institutions on earth (namely, the church) could only vaguely refer to the eschaton. John Milbank and Michael Hollerich, for example, both argue against Markus’s view of Augustine, however, each suggesting that Augustine sees the City of God empirically and eschatologically in the church’s sacramental life.


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This may only be a partial realization of what we will someday know fully, but theologian John Milbank (for example) wants decisively to mark out the church as political in itself. As I noted in the introduction to this chapter, Milbank’s exposition of The City of God does leave room for the possibility that households, too, may be loci for the civitas dei, and in a few places, Milbank makes use of marriage and household forms to make his points. Milbank’s vision can be interpreted as overly referent to politics in contradistinction to the state, in which the church seems overly insular; his view of secular imagination can be construed as related mostly to stateside politics, while the church stands apart as a potential (yet fallen) institution that could advocate for an ‘‘ontology of peace.’’ Nonetheless, Milbank’s work does provide an opening for speaking of households in relation to the church; on this point it must be noted that if Augustine’s vision for the church-household relationship in Confessions holds true in The City of God, then Milbank has not used his consideration of households enough in his own considerations of the church. Earlier I mentioned that one way to view households is to see them as creating good citizens for the state; thus, a good, well-ordered household that is appropriately regulated by the state leads to a continued well-ordered state. Augustine does not have such a positive view of the functioning of the state or the household, except through the grace of God, a key distinction.31 What we see in The City of God, then, is the thorough, unwavering description of the world as a place where good and evil appear to coexist. Nothing, including all human institutions, as well as the church (insofar as it is a human institution), the household, and the state, can be named perfect. Nor, on Augustine’s terms, can we name any of them as more or less perfect. Where is it that the perpetual motion of a changeable, fallible society, ends? Augustine places this partly in worship. This is because the church is able to participate in the life of the eternal God through its worship, which Christ has given. In book X of The City of God, he writes of worship, ‘‘[It] is that we may see Him, so far as He can be seen; it is that we may cleave to Him, that we are cleansed from all stain of sins and evil passions, and are consecrated in His name.’’32 All institutions, including the household and the state, have reference in the church as the Body of Christ. Thus, contrary to what many contemporary theologians (such as Browning) attempt to do when considering that religion ‘‘might’’ have something to offer the state with respect to marriage, Augustine does not give a clear description of the difference between what is a civil/political matter and what is a household matter. In book 6, Augustine delineates Varro’s three branches of theology: the fabulous, the civil, and the natural. By the end of the book, Augustine has demonstrated that, in fact, fabulous theology, which is looked down upon as superstitious and as

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belonging to the theater and to plays, is actually indistinguishable from civil theology, which is that practiced in reference to the city and the public arena. He writes, ‘‘Let them go on, and let them attempt with all the subtlety they can to distinguish the civil theology from the fabulous, the cities from the theatres, the temples from the stages, the sacred things of the priests from the songs of the poets, as honourable things from base things, truthful things from fallacious.’’33 The example that Augustine first cites about this false distinction is not the invocation of gods in the Senate or other definitive ‘‘political’’ matter but the rather common question of marriage and the marriage bed. Under the rubric of ‘‘fabulous theology’’ come such gods and goddesses as Liber and Libera, who liberate men and women during sex, through the emission of sperm. But how is this different, asks Augustine, from the gods who protect a newly delivered woman from molestation (Intercidona, Pilumnus, Diverra), or the several gods who ensure the proper functioning of the marriage bed (Jugatinus, Domiducus, Manturnae, Pertunda, Venus, and Priapus, among others)?34 In the next chapter of book 6, Augustine goes on to quote Seneca in relation to the gods that do protect the Senate, which in the contemporary era would seem more properly ‘‘civic.’’ The point, here, is that for Augustine the division is not domestic versus civil. There is not the same sense here of the public (city/state politics) versus private (domestic) that we will see in later nineteenth- and twentieth-century theology, philosophy, and political theory.35 Such a view is in line with what Rowan Williams suggests. He points to the importance of households in Augustine’s considerations of the City of God, writing: No, the city of God is not set over against ‘‘the state’’ as a body which invariably exercises its power in a different manner from the secular arm (Augustine is emphatically not a Tolstoyan); the difference is, as we should expect, in the ends for which power is exercised, and the spirit in which it is exercised. . . . the purpose under God of the former is, so far as possible, to restore the rebellious wills of human beings to some approximation to the divine ordo—which, as Augustine repeatedly reminds us, is also the right ordering of our internal lives, the dominance of soul over body, reason over passion. In household and in society, coercion is properly aimed at restoring the offender paci unde desiluerat.36 Williams goes on to note the connection Augustine makes between imperare and consulare, where the latter term refers to ‘‘spiritual nurturing’’ toward peace of the body and the soul.37 Such spiritual nurture takes place primarily in households. Williams correctly points out that there is no intel-


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ligible separation of households and the political realm for Augustine because both are rightly involved in maintaining peace and justice, especially when properly aligned toward God. If I am correct about how Augustine sees the church in relation to polis and oikos, then he has the ability to show us even more the ways in which the relationship of the church to political structure and household structure, as well as the relationship between household and polis, was drastically influenced by the Enlightenment, modernity, and the resultant move away from the ekklesia. When contemporary theorists began considering marriage and family in direct relation to the state and its laws, they overlooked the connection that Augustine had made between church and state, and church and household. It was the church that properly linked the two together in view of the Parousia, for Christians, but under the influence of separation between church and state, and the privatization of the church that we have seen take hold especially in the aftermath of Kantian theories about religion and morality, it was the relationship between the state and the household that remained and intensified.38

Further Reflection on Households in the City of God The books in The City of God that are perhaps most helpful for further reflection on households are books 8 through 10, an earlier part of the work, which conclude the section in which Augustine acts most strongly as an apologist for the faith against the pagan detractors of Christianity in the face of barbarian invasion. It is not accidental, I think, that Augustine includes some of his most serious reflection on the church and its worship in books 8 through 10, which come at the end of the section (the first ten books of The City of God) on Roman history, and which also mark the beginnings of his history of Israel, and the life, death, resurrection, and second coming of Christ (books 11 through 22). There is a way in which the very structure of Augustine’s work, with worship appearing as a sort of mediator between the story of the earthly city and the story of the eternal city, thereby demonstrates the struggle of human creatures to participate in God’s eternal life, as creatures; we may wish to ascribe worship most readily to eternal, lofty things, but Augustine is not satisfied with a pat answer (and a pat separation) between our earthly existence and our desire for God. In books 8 through 10 of The City of God, Augustine makes some beginning moves about the church, its worship, and the daily households in which we reside. Here, he considers the philosophers, especially the Platonists, many of whom thought that worship of many gods could lead people toward eternal blessedness. On Augustine’s view, Plato himself thought that the gods were all

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good and could be invoked to help us humans toward final happiness, and so sacred rites ought to be performed to them.39 On his view of the Platonists, we appear to be always in a state of seeking and striving after as many different religious rituals and gods as we can muster. The good life (and good moral action) involves being in a constant state of worship, defined as participation in temple and shrine rituals. Yet Augustine is not satisfied by such a conclusion. The Platonist way of life is too filled with frenzy, and there is never an opportunity for rest and blessed repose. In book 9, he considers further what it means for worship to have a mediating role for humans; he asks whether demons could appropriately be considered mediators between humans and the gods. Of course, the answer is that Christ is the final mediator. That is, we do not participate in the blessedness of God secondarily, through angels or demons, but we may participate directly in the life of the Trinity through Christ.40 With Christ, all human attempts to attain worthiness and divinity, even through worship, come to a halt. The question becomes, though, how it is that one may participate in divine nature, if such frenzied worship comes to an end. It is no mistake, then, that only a few pages later in book 9, he mentions being cleansed by the Holy Spirit,41 which is an unmistakable reference to baptism, the means by which we are initiated into Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, where all other words and rituals stop. In book 10, Augustine gives a fuller answer to this question. Ritual is involved, but it is not ritual that is closed in on itself, present only in temples, and divorced from daily realities in which we find ourselves. For example, he says, in a passage that involves extensive Eucharistic imagery: To Him we owe the service which is called in Greek latreıá, whether we render it outwardly or inwardly; for we are all His temple, each of us severally and all of us together, because He condescends to inhabit each individually and the whole harmonious body, being no greater in all than in each, since He is neither expanded nor divided. . . . For He is the fountain of our happiness, He the end of all our desires. Being attached to him, or rather let me say, re-attached— for we had detached ourselves and lost hold of Him—being, I say, re-attached to Him, we tend towards Him by love, that we may rest in Him, and find our blessedness by attaining that end.42 Augustine’s description of the undivided nature of God juxtaposed with incense, blood, and bodily sense shows how we can see God, and possibly even attain God, when we worship. We tend toward theosis via physical, and limited, elements of this world, not through transcendence of bodily limitations.


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Additionally, in the preceding passage, God inhabits the body ‘‘severally’’ and wholly. As in Confessions, Augustine sees that the body is a dwelling place, but it is a dwelling place in which the individual’s life and the church’s life are inextricably connected, both to each other and to the ultimate end in God. God is neither lesser nor greater in the part than in the whole; if God were greater or lesser in the whole over the part (for instance, if God’s presence in the bread and wine together were greater than God’s presence in the small portion a communicant might receive), the Eucharistic meal itself would make no sense. Neither the church nor the individual is greater or lesser than the other; whether in individual worship or corporate worship, each part bears the weight of the whole. But each part also bears the exultation and final rest of the whole, and for the whole, as well. Both the part and the whole are always continually referring to God, the sacrifice God makes in Christ, and the whole of Christ’s body, from which ‘‘we had detached ourselves.’’ Augustine uses ‘‘we’’ throughout this passage, which is a word referring quite well to a corporate sense, but also relates to individual worship as in ‘‘we’’ several people. When it comes to worship, there is never a time when ‘‘we’’ becomes ‘‘I,’’ because all reference to the individual or the group is made toward the Body of Christ of which we are part by virtue of baptism. Moreover, in this passage there likewise never seems to be a time when we are not doing worship or when we are not somehow attached to Christ. There is the worship of the church, related inexorably to the worship we have in our homes via right living. We experience ourselves as reattached to the body of Christ, and living out the virtues and habits of humility and praise.

A Nonidealistic Vision of the Political Church Lest this sound too idealistic, the caveat to all of this is that Augustine does not have an overly jubilant vision of the church. This is important, because on one hand Christians must recognize the importance of the Body of Christ as household for their own living, but on the other hand recognize that this vision of church must not become an object independent of God and God’s judgment. This point is apparent especially in his sermons, in which he deals with the vagaries of life with his parishioners, as we have seen earlier. The church as the Body of Christ is the location of the goods that will lead us to eternal life, and yet we do not know the true church fully in this temporal life. He knows and sees that there are people, even baptized Christians, who do not appear to live out this vision of the church. In one sermon preached at the Easter vigil, which Augustine considered to be ‘‘the mother of all holy vigils,’’ he proclaims:

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christians’ eschatological home So on this night both the hostile world and the world that has been reconciled is keeping vigil. This one keeps awake to praise the doctor by whom it has been delivered; that one keeps awake to blaspheme the judge by whom it has been condemned. This one keeps watch, godly minds aglow with fervor; that one keeps watch, gnashing its teeth and green with envy. In a word, it is charity that does not permit this one to sleep, iniquity that one; Christian vitality this one, diabolical jealousy that one.43

For Augustine, two distinct worlds are paradoxically united by the great Easter vigil, in that members of the ‘‘hostile’’ and ‘‘reconciled’’ worlds both stay awake on this great night. The worlds are at odds with each other but not physically separate. The difference between the two is that one of the worlds is reconciled in Christ and experiences that reconciliation in similar physical signs, and specific virtues like charity and praise, which are developed in specific practices like liturgical observance, and refraining from ‘‘robbery, from fraud, from perjury. . . . Turn your backs on the whirlpool of drunkenness. Dread all forms of fornication like death.’’44 Part of his assessment of where we see the heavenly city is in the church, but this is only a partial vision because the church as human institution, like any earthly, changeable institution, exhibits evidence of both loves. In another Easter sermon, for instance, Augustine exhorts his congregation, saying: [You], brothers and sisters, who are after a fashion, in virtue of your age, parents of rebirth, I am addressing you and urging you so to live, that you may rejoice with those who imitate you and not perish with them. A person newly born observes one or other of the faithful who’s a drunkard; what I’m afraid of is that he may say to himself, ‘‘Why is that one of the faithful and yet he drinks so much?’’45 For Augustine, the church is no less a potential place of wickedness than any other place in the temporal realm because of its members. This is why Augustine here tries to move the ‘‘parents of rebirth’’ toward living more faithfully, to be generous in giving, and to imitate those who are the most faithful.46 Augustine’s perception of memory as well as the Eucharistic body as part and whole figure crucially in his conception of this nonidealistic church and the equally nonidealistic household. In these Easter sermons, Augustine shows that memory and thought are both collective and individual. The ‘‘past times’’ that Augustine’s parishioners remember in worship are not ones in which they were physically, literally present. It is the collective memory, passed on to them through scripture, proclamation of the Word, baptism into the life


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and death of Jesus Christ, and the Eucharist, that gives the individual worshiper the language with which to praise God. This is related, however, to the thought of the human contemplating reality (which here, for Augustine, appears to mean the present reality and present moment, ‘‘which won’t come round again’’). Thus, the collective memory, which engenders continual and appropriate praise of God, points directly to Augustine’s eschatological vision, to the Parousia and the time when God will be ‘‘all in all.’’ As Augustine says in another Easter vigil sermon: ‘‘Although, then, at this vigil of ours the Lord is not being awaited as though he was still going to rise again, but the memory of his resurrection is being renewed in this annual solemnity, all the same by celebrating it we recall past events in such a way, that we symbolize in this same vigil what we are about in living by faith.’’47 The gathered faithful are neither re-crucifying Christ nor seeing him rise again in the present moment; they are remembering ritually what they ‘‘live in faith.’’ Thus, these events are happening in a different sense in daily life activities, because the symbols of the rituals are ‘‘what we are about in living by faith.’’ Augustine says the faithful do live and proclaim Christ not just through the remembering that happens in the Easter vigil but also through the shape of their lives before and after a specific ritual. Liturgy here is connected to living the Christian life. The memory of God, connected with thanksgiving to God and praise of God, is also connected to the daily life of the Christian. As we have already seen at the end of chapter 2, the function of good works, for Augustine, is not to achieve salvation because Augustine’s view of grace will not allow for such a conception. Nonetheless, he does advocate good works, and he does engage in exhortative sermons. Works here have the function of praising God.48 Our entire lives, as Christians, are directed toward the praise and worship of God, and that is the aim of ‘‘ethics’’ as well. This kind of worship is not unnecessary activity, nor is it a sort of opting out of living ‘‘in the world.’’ It means, rather, that the church cannot be or act ‘‘Christian’’ enough; nor can its members be or act ‘‘Christian’’ enough. At the end of it all there is only and always God, in whom all happiness resides. The politics of the Christian’s worship life, both as members of households and as citizens of God’s world, require that God is truly the end of everything.

Conclusions Augustine does not relegate eschatology to some undetermined future date but sees it as somehow realized in the present day, even if not to its fullest potential. God is at work, especially in the church’s celebration of baptism and the

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Eucharist, and in relation to that, our own living out of what it means to be baptized and part of the Eucharistic community. 49 The marriage of the Bride and the Bridegroom is not a mere hoped-for image; it is an all-encompassing event in the life of the church, and it is related to life in the households that are connected to the church. On the one hand, the marriage between the Lamb and the Bride is the marriage, which restores what was lost in the fall and restores us to our true Edenic state. On the other hand, the restoration of this marriage, in which both married and virgin participate, is not an individual enterprise. It is collective, and it is the church’s life, especially as seen in the Eucharist, that demonstrates our restoration, not the individual’s life, or even the individual’s relationship with other people as such. As Christians, then, our knowledge of and participation in the Parousia means we cannot return to the status quo of what marriage and family had been in our postlapsarian, pre-Christianized state. In spite of the fact that former ideals of marital and bridal imagery are overturned by the knowledge of the Parousia, the wisdom of the church does not neglect to deal with the daily functioning and managing of marriages, monasteries, other intentional communities, and other kinds of households that have a direct relationship with and important role in the church. What I have claimed in this chapter is that the question should never have been how the state and family are to be related, or even how the church and family (as in the ‘‘domestic church’’) are related, but first, what kind of family was meant. The Christian’s household is the Household of God, and theologians must therefore probe what that means for the understanding of the church and its worship. Only then can we begin to see what John Chrysostom meant by households as ‘‘miniature churches.’’ Wannenwetsch suggests that care of the household is ‘‘the further development of the ‘worship’ form of activity in the life lived in the oikos, which is now no longer conceived in a private, self-contained sense.’’50 Further, domestic life ‘‘was no longer just a pre-political and pre-ethical sphere, where relations and patterns of behavior were regulated according to traditional hierarchical functions, and were subject to the patron’s power of disposal.’’51 To understand the significance of households in light of Christ’s presence, in other words, there must first be acknowledgment that the household was not, in the Romans’ day, and is not now merely a birthplace and rearing place for the children who will one day be political citizens of the nation-state; nor is it merely a container for all that does not belong in so-called public realms. It is also not a place where any one person takes precedence over another absolutely, for the only absolute point that can be made is that all the members of the Christian household must answer to Christ. The Christian household is significant because of the way


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that worship, the summation of the human telos in Christian terms, continues there after the Sunday celebrations. If the good functioning of society rests on having good marriages and families, as several of the theologians discussed in chapter 1 seem to argue, it is not because good marriages and families necessarily lead to the best of the well-ordered, happy society. This way of thinking leads toward falsely eschatological ideals. Rather, good marriages and families, but even more so, good households, in the thicker sense of the word and in the sense of being directed toward Christ, are sacramental and direct all of humanity toward its ultimate end in God. This is political and this is development of good citizenship, but not the citizenship we might first have imagined. The necessity is to see that the household in discussion here is not really the small household, but the Household of God in Christ. The smaller households of which we are a part are rightly understood only in the context of that great relationship with the Christian body. Thus, the frenzy surrounding marriage and family and the consternation about how to live out the best household or raise the ‘‘perfect’’ children (or, at least, to be the best parent possible) hopefully dies down. The focus is no longer a tunnel vision on the family but contemplation of Christ and Christ’s Body. When small households are oriented toward Christ rather than toward an elusive vision of being part of the perfect marriage or family (including singles who find themselves oriented toward that elusive goal as well), that is when we begin to see their true character over against the cultural ideals we hold so dear. It is to this topic of how small households and the Household of God are properly oriented toward Christ that we now turn.


7 At Home in Christ Living as Citizen-Households

We might well have expected that God would turn around, and even explode, any preconceptions of households. Mary recognized this attribute of God when she proclaimed that God topples kings from their thrones, lifts up the lowly, and fills the hungry with good things (Luke 1:46–55). God does not seem interested in perpetuating cultural norms about the ordering of society simply for their own sake. Any norms that the Christian might presuppose about marriage, family, and singleness must be measured against the primary aim: does it give glory to God? Again and again in his writing, Augustine brings us back to this point by asking questions about human pride and selfishness versus obedience to God. More to the point, Augustine tries to focus the Christian life toward eudaimonia, or happiness in God, and that especially includes his conception of how households lead us toward that end. This chapter is an attempt to suggest alternate views of households, over against dominant cultural or theological views, to show more concretely how the liturgical life of the Household of God spills over to daily households, and considers some of the many ways virtues might be cultivated there. Getting married and having children are not actions that set the standards for what it means to be a ‘‘domestic church’’; the standard for the domestic church is the church universal. Florence Caffrey Bourg has noted how much of contemporary theology focuses on the nuclear family.1 But if marriage and family are not the standard, neither should we return to the view that a single life of celibacy or

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vowed virginity are the standards. I think we can maintain an understanding of Paul’s statements about the goodness of virginity in 1 Corinthians 7, together with all the other parts of scripture devoted to marriage and states of singleness, that denigrates no one and that helpfully recognizes the goods of our various households along with the Good that is our final end. Augustine’s wisdom here is in his recognition that the life of virtue necessarily involves living surrounded by domestic cares and troubles, but that domestic life directed toward life with God does not have a particular form. Augustine’s understanding of this point stands in contrast to the contemporary obsession with developing the ‘‘right families’’ via evangelical groups like Focus on the Family or more liberal groups like the Religion, Culture, and Family Project. For example, in his letter The Excellence of Widowhood, Augustine dispels notions of human visions of ‘‘the right families’’: Augustine is more concerned that Juliana’s household (all those widows who live with her, along with her household staff ) seek after God in all their daily living. The vision of households presented in this book is not about seeing all households as the same—as though somehow a married dual-career couple with young children should be run the same way as a household of one older adult. The particularities of each small household remain. Yet the particularities of all these households find their place in the context of the Household of God, and in that context they bear relationship with each other and undergird each other. I am not concerned, then, with epitomizing a particular household but with considering some of the ways various households must consider similar theological questions, precisely because they are related to Christ’s church. If, as I intimated in the last chapter, the question is, What kind of household is meant? then this is the chapter where I shall attempt to answer that question more concretely, by looking at specific liturgical and household practices. In this chapter, I hint at how I think what I have outlined about Augustine’s way of thinking about households matters for the church. Work that is more detailed needs to be done with several of the areas I mention. Much of what I have suggested fits well with work others have done regarding marriage and family, with the caveat that I hope my work pushes us toward thinking about households in a more ecclesial and Christ-centered way. This means understanding notions of ‘‘family’’ in light of Christian baptism and the family of the church primarily (recognizing that ‘‘family,’’ because of its reconfigured connotations in Christ, means something different than the way ‘‘family’’ is often construed). I hope that this book could provide different ground for addressing more complicated questions, such as same-sex marriage, about which theologians continue to argue and for which I have no ready answer. I also hope that married people will see in themselves the possibility of

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being married ‘‘monks,’’ while those who are single will see in themselves the possibility of being Christian parents, and that these are all states of life bound up in the one Household of God of which we are part.

Practice and Virtue It is necessary, first, to consider the means by which the Household of God and its constituent households form people into a Christian way of life. Christian practice and cultivation of Christian virtue are two points of departure for this consideration that have been brought up at several points in the earlier expositions of Augustine. Theologians often mention Alasdair MacIntyre in books on practice and virtue, and I, too, am indebted to his views on practice. MacIntyre suggests that a practice is a ‘‘socially established human project’’ resulting in ‘‘human powers to achieve excellence’’ and ‘‘human conceptions of the goods and ends’’ involved.2 His view of practices is robust and complex and thus he says, ‘‘Tic-tac-toe is not an example of a practice in this sense, nor is throwing a football with skill; but the game of football is, and so is chess.’’ Practices are complex enough to involve a whole range of skills and encourage a whole lifetime of honing and improving those skills. On MacIntyre’s view, practices include sustaining households and other kinds of communities, and his ideas relate well with what has been suggested here. MacIntyre is not doing theology, however, and theologians need to raise some important questions and points about these views of practice, particularly his stress on the human in this definition. For example, MacIntyre’s ‘‘socially established human project’’ might more properly be considered the Christian community of the church, and yet the church is not a human project, but rather the project of the Holy Spirit. God gives humanity the church and gives the church the means for witnessing to new life in Christ; this is why Stanley Hauerwas can claim his often-quoted statement ‘‘Therefore the first social task of the church—the people capable of remembering and telling the story of God we find in Jesus—is to be the church and thus help the world understand itself as world.’’3 When the church is truly witnessing to the gospel of Christ, the world knows itself as God’s own creation that is marred by sinfulness but yet caught up in God’s redemption. Critics of Hauerwas might suggest that the church becomes an overly reified concept, which is problematic because the church clearly perpetuates human injustices itself. Hauerwas’s view does not dismiss that churches can be corrupt, however; he is careful to describe the church as ‘‘the people capable of remembering and telling the story of God we find in Jesus’’ and not as the people who necessarily tell or live that story

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correctly all the time. In addition, the people capable of witnessing to the gospel story in this way have been given that grace through the Holy Spirit; gospel witness is that theological ‘‘social project.’’ Another theological description needed for MacIntyre’s work is his use of telos, as the aim toward which humans tend. This is more properly theologically understood as eschatology. Eschatology, as seen elsewhere in this book, directs us toward the time when God will be all in all and human purpose becomes drawn into God’s own purpose. Christians have new life in Christ, which will be fully revealed at the eschaton, but the church witnesses to that new life even in the in-between times. Sarah Coakley has raised the point that it is all too easy to move from MacIntyre’s vision directly to considering distinctive practices Christians might do, such as chastity, which would lead one to a Pelagian, human-oriented view of practice. Thus one might think that a person could ‘‘practice’’ something and achieve its ends on solely human terms, without God’s grace. Coakley insists that grace and practice must go hand in hand, and she wonders how they might be juxtaposed. One example she gives is that of W. H. Vanstone, an Anglican theologian. He wrote theology with his parish life in mind: his visits with parishioners’ lives, his disciplines of meditating and praying on scripture, celebrating the sacraments, and being a pastor to the people in his care. This man, who engaged in this lifetime of service to God and people, wrote about practices as a way of ‘‘being like God in Christ . . . handed over to the world, to wait upon it, to receive its power of meaning.’’4 Vanstone’s description of his own life matches what many mystics have also observed about their own lives on the way to life with God. Practices are both active, in that they potentially shape us in cruciform ways, and yet curiously passive. We do practices, and yet we are also to wait upon God and serve the people God has given us. Activity and contemplation must be intertwined and must rely on God’s grace. Vanstone, the Anglican priest, encountered many days and years when it was hard to see or to know that any of his practices were doing much good; he did not know how to describe the fruits of his daily work until late in his life. Yet he kept at all his practices, waiting for God, living a life of both contemplation and action. It is the contemplative nature of practices that Christians often miss, asking more questions about what to ‘‘do’’ in a given situation than learning how to ‘‘rest’’ in God’s own Being. Following this line of reasoning, Coakley considers three forms of ascetical theology, which might also be likened to three ways of considering practices: the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. Purgation is the state of giving up what we ought not to be doing or thinking. Forms of life that are explicitly deemed non-Christian become replaced with forms of life that more clearly

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lead people toward their end in God. For example, Ambrose is noted for having excommunicated the emperor Theodosius in response to the emperor’s orders to kill people at Thessalonica during some prolonged mob violence. On Ambrose’s view, murder of these innocents was not in keeping with a Christian way of life and required some penitential act and purgation before Theodosius would be allowed to receive communion. Illumination is the stage of encountering God from another viewpoint; it is a way of deepening relationship with God. In terms of practice, we might consider the Rule of Saint Benedict, which was written for beginners who wish to follow Christ, as Benedict proclaims. Its purpose is less to prohibit certain practices than to encourage members of Benedictine houses to develop habits that more extrinsically follow Christ. Coakley suggests that it is at this illuminative stage that practices become corporate and communal, and thus have import for households as communities. For example, the Benedictines do not live as hermits; they live in communities, and it is in community that certain habits, such as a life of prayer and hospitality, are lived out and, more important, sustained. Finally, the third stage of contemplation is the unitive stage, the point where one finds union with God, even to the point of selfannihilation, because the will is so conformed to God’s will. Theological wisdom is gained at this stage that comes only through transformation due to God’s grace and the sometimes painful practice of waiting for God.5 Practice on Christian terms, then, is not only about humans learning how to play a game of football or chess as in MacIntyre’s examples of practices—in this case the ‘‘game’’ is Christian life; it is practice given and nourished by God. The given nature of the Christian life is readily apparent with the Household of God because God gives and institutes the church via the Holy Spirit, and schools Christians into a particular cruciform way of life that begins in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Christian formation here happens most particularly in prayer: the Eucharistic prayer, and other common prayers, which combine activity and contemplation into one. The Sunday service with Eucharistic liturgy that most denominations, Protestant and Catholic, use incorporates purgation (‘‘Lord have mercy’’), illumination (corporate practice of reading the Word), and union with God (in the hearing of the Word and in the reception of Eucharist). These points about grace and practice, action and contemplation, are especially important for a book of this kind, where the aim has been to see all manner of households bound together in the one Household of God. Mary and Martha, the representatives of contemplative and apostolic living, respectively (discussed in chapter 2), loom large in Christian practice because common wisdom has held that monastic households were the places where

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contemplative prayer could happen, while married households were the places that more active witness took place. Practicing the Christian life with the Household of God, however, reminds us that part of practicing the Christian life requires prayer and awaiting God’s grace no matter what the state of life or form of household is. This is not to avoid noting that certain forms of life are more conducive to certain forms of prayer, but it is to suggest that no matter what one’s state of life may be, households cannot be exclusively the purview of one ‘‘kind’’ of practice or other, or one ‘‘game’’ or other, because Christian practice involves both. In relation to practice is also virtue: a ‘‘good habit’’ that leads us more and more closely toward God. Habit, in this particular sense, is somewhat different than the way we often use ‘‘habit’’ in English. This is not necessarily an activity that one does every day without thinking or willing the act; the good habitus involves the will and the intellect. We have freedom, in other words, to choose the good or evil act, and the more closely aligned with God we are, the freer we are in our actions, because in Christ we can choose the good. An example that is often given is that of the musician. A beginning musician struggles to learn the notes and forms of music; an advanced musician knows the forms of music to such an extent that he or she knows recognizes appropriate moments to take the music beyond such rules toward improvisation. Baroque music and jazz are two examples of this kind of ability to improvise on themes, add new melodies, and create new filigrees. One of the ends of any household, then, is its members’ cultivation of those virtues that lead us more and more to union with God. This union does not take place without God’s grace, which alone is responsible for giving us the theological virtues (at least on Thomas’s account). This view of virtue should not come across as overly idealistic: virtues and cultivating good habits do not necessarily make us happy in the moment. Moreover, it is difficult to tell, in the moment, how a virtue may be cultivated. Instead, the idea is that it is only over time, often lengthy periods, that we will see the effects and growth of virtues in our lives. In fact, we might say that most of us are ‘‘almost-virtuous,’’6 hopefully reaching always in the direction toward God. Both the daily household and the Household of God are places where we may learn and grow more toward God. Because I have suggested in this book that our theological understanding of household expands in the face of God’s Household, and that therefore we might entertain the possibility of married monks and celibates with children, in a reconfigured theological sense, I will focus on a few practices and virtues in this chapter that are often directed more to one particular state of life or another, and also some virtues that relate particularly to the Household of God.

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Both the daily household and the Household of God are places where we may learn and grow more toward God. A full account of virtues and the household must be left for another book, however.

Washing, Eating, and the Practice of Hospitality Saint Benedict’s monastic rule recognized the central role of hospitality to his own households when he wrote, ‘‘All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.’’7 Benedict assumes that monasteries are generally never without guests, so care must be taken to preserve the precise character of the monastic household while also allowing for the presence of Christ in their midst. Benedict notes that a guest at one of his monasteries ought to receive a good welcome, food, bedding, and a dose of prayer and scripture reading. Guests at his monasteries ought to know that they are guests of a particular kind of community, and the welcome received is therefore a particular kind of welcome. Guests, too, are particular guests; they are seen as Christ and not simply as some vague, general notion of ‘‘yet another stranger.’’ Benedictine hospitality remains a great example of Christian hospitality, but though many authors have noted the ways in which Benedictine hospitality might converge on small households,8 monastic hospitality makes less sense for other kinds of households. Part of the reason is precisely in the particularity of the community. We cannot leave good hospitality solely up to monastic communities, although various small households can look to monasteries as good practitioners of hospitality. But Eucharist, baptism, and foot washing are all aspects of the church’s own particular practices of hospitality, demonstrating the eschatological character of the Household of God. This hospitality helps cultivate certain virtues, good and true not only for monasteries but for all the households of which Christians are part. However, when the Household of God and daily households are viewed as entirely distinct from each other, it is all too easy to overlook the significance of daily eating and washing, and how the church’s own practices of eating and washing tell Christians something about the character of their daily households. Edward Kilmartin writes that ‘‘any Christian activity has the aspects of preaching, service and worship. For the life of faith is a totality, embracing the whole of human existence, expressing itself fully in all the ways it is actualized.’’9 Kilmartin makes a sweeping claim here: all of the Christian’s life, including perhaps even the seemingly secular activities that we think are unholy and secular, is encompassed in God’s saving grace. This is partly what we have recognized, in this book, about the place of the daily household and the

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Household of God, since part of the point of understanding the household via salvation history, as Augustine does, has been to see that God’s gracious action is present in all households. This is the paradox that the Eucharistic and baptismal celebrations repeat time after time. Ordinary objects—bread, wine, and water—become bearers of God’s grace and presence. In turn, they are themselves caught up in the history of God’s saving grace, particularly the Incarnation, just as households are also bound in that history. For example, Laurence Stookey pinpoints many ways in which the Eucharist conveys several theological meanings for food. We are reminded of the materiality of creation in the very fact that the bread and wine are ‘‘fruit of the vine’’ that was given to us as gift at creation. In the Eucharistic celebration, we remember the fall, too, and its injunction about human work being toil—the Eucharistic offering is the ‘‘work of human hands.’’ That is, this bread is not exactly manna from heaven; we humans must still participate in the offering of this bread and wine, making the offering from our own work. The Eucharist is most obviously a part of the redemptive work of Christ, since its aim is for us ‘‘to be one body’’ in Christ. Finally, this meal is one that participates, in part, in an eschatological reality, though it is not itself the fullness of that reality.10 Baptism, too, carries with it all the meaning of salvation history. As Alexander Schmemann has remarked, ‘‘Baptism . . . reveals and communicates her own faith, her ‘experience’ of man and the world, of creation, fall and redemption, of Christ and the Holy Spirit, of the new life of the new creation.’’11 Water appears as the separation of heavens, and between the dry land and the sea. It bears the mark of the fall especially in causing the deaths of the disobedient people in Noah’s time, and is a definitive part of salvation for people in the Exodus. It is also uniquely representative of redemption, since Christians are baptized into the ‘‘life, death, and resurrection of Christ.’’ Finally, there is the new life that we have as the ‘‘new creation’’ in which we are participating even now. Foot washing is another Christian practice that readily shows connections between quotidian households and the Household of God. This was especially so historically, when foot washing was a practice done out of hospitality to guests and was probably part of household routine. Likewise, there is some evidence that foot washing was also done as preparation for the Eucharistic meal.12 Indeed, some Christian groups practice foot washing on a regular basis (outside of Holy Thursday services), as preparation for Holy Communion. As Mark Thiessen Nation suggests, for Christians foot washing demonstrates servanthood, of the kind that Jesus himself showed to his disciples, and foot washing also shows our need for cleansing, and receiving help from others.13

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These remarks on our eating and washing in the context of salvation history make clear that the ordinary stuff of life such as water and bread is not simply part of one ‘‘means of grace’’ but part of a full communication in a life of grace. Though the daily household itself is not a sacrament and therefore does not convey grace in this way, it too is a participant, even in its ordinary activities, in the fullness of Christian life because the household, too, is inextricably caught up in salvation history. This is part of the reason I have also been able to say in this book that it is because we eat and drink and bathe at home that we have some sense of the meaning of Christian rituals in churches. The converse is also true: because of the way Christian ritual can form us into particular habits, it is also formative for Christian life in small households. In common Western cultural views, eating and washing are literally familiar acts, usually done with and to people with whom we are intimately connected. We tend to invite certain people to our homes to eat; we tend to bathe only certain people—the very young and the very old who are related to us. Conversely, the Table is the place where those with money and those without both receive food; the font is the place where all are baptized, not simply those with whom we are familiar. At a typical dinner party, one would never drink from the same cup or eat off the same plate as the person across the table, but this is exactly the practice enacted and remembered at Holy Communion. Baptism and foot washing are likewise acts of heightened intimacy in the context of a whole crowd of strangers. These acts require removal of socks and shoes, wearing a bathing suit, making visible bodily imperfections. The caveat is that these are Christian strangers, and the strange sort of intimacy engendered in these activities of eating and washing demonstrates very particularly that this new Christian Household to which one belongs has an entirely different worldview.14 These Christian rituals bring us back to the fact that water is thicker than blood, for the presence of an entire congregation or godparents at a baptism highlights that this group of strangers has agreed to sustain and nurture the baptized person into the faith. This kind of hospitality is important, but a question that arises in the context of modernity is whether the small Christian households are in a position to mirror anything of the hospitality done in the Household of God. That is, we may be radically hospitable in the church, but does the church remain a separate sphere in terms of the ways Christians live? Christine Pohl argues that contemporary households have not been able to be hospitable in following the long tradition of Christian hospitality because the rise of modernity led to partitioning and separation of places for hospitality. She suggests, ‘‘Activities that were originally located in the household—work, religious observance, protection, education, care for the sick, provision for the aging, and care for

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strangers—are now located in their own spheres and separate institutions.’’15 Not only have our eating and drinking habits at home become limited to those with whom we are most familiar, but there is now an entire hospitality industry in hotels and restaurants. Hospitals, once a monastic site for practicing hospitality to the sick, have now become commercialized, industrialized, and, more to the point, separated from their Christian roots. The contemporary view of households, as I noted in chapter 1, is that they function as separate spheres from the rest of society, particularly separated from economic and political activity. Where this view of separation is prevalent, households are unable to practice the hospitality that early Christians appear to have practiced regularly, in connection with the Eucharist and otherwise. We have evidence from Tertullian, for example, of a practice of having church-sponsored communal meals (agape meals) for Christians, catechumens (who could not yet receive Eucharist), widows, and others in the church’s care, distinct from the Eucharistic table.16 Dom Gregory Dix suggests that, when the prayers of both the earliestknown Eucharistic rites and the prayers of the agape meal are taken together, the form in total looks like the predecessor chaburah meal in Jewish tradition.17 This proposed connection hints at the kind of connection between households (particularly household meals) and the Household of God of which I am speaking here. Christine Pohl mentions several other ways in which hospitality was practiced by early Christians: Basil the Great’s hospitals for travelers, the sick, and the poor serve as one example of how Christian hospitality manifested, specifically within the context of the Christian community. But hospitality was not simply something that could be relegated to a church-sponsored institution: Pohl also cites John Chrysostom, who advises his parishioners to set aside a guest room for the beggar or the ill person who might happen on the doorstep.18 These early Christians had scriptural mandate for viewing hospitality in distinctive ways connected to their own households. In his book, Thomas Breidenthal considers the passages in the New Testament that seem to support an antifamily kind of rhetoric, as in Matthew 10:37 (‘‘Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me’’). He concludes that the New Testament is not against families, but rather against ‘‘any family system that succeeds in substituting familiarity for genuine neighboring, and which uses family loyalty as an excuse to ignore or even demonize the stranger.’’19 This is related to what I suggested in chapter 5 about the expansiveness of households and what it means to be family. Hospitality dies in the face of constricted views of nuclear or discrete families and household practices, he suggests, but the true scrip-

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tural vision is one where members of households are able to reach out to strangers because of the way their households support and sustain them. An analogy might well be the Eucharist: we eat the body and blood of Christ in order to be Christ’s body for the world. Perhaps when Christian households are rightly placed in their ecclesial context, hospitality in the small household becomes possible because the church, in its practices, is able to mirror that practice to households. Members of these small households may well protest because if the standard of hospitality is the radical openness to all people at the Lord’s table, or the kind of intimacy and nakedness enforced by the rituals of baptism and foot washing, daily households can see that this kind of hospitality is burdensome and likely too idealistic for most small households. Perhaps the same point David Matzko McCarthy has said of nuptial theology could be made here: that it is too much of an ideal, especially ‘‘when most of us are trying to get through the day without anyone hurt.’’20 Catholic Worker and L’Arche households seem most frequently to come up as shining examples of households participating in ecclesial hospitality, as they should, for these are remarkable households giving witness to Christian hospitality. Yet to learn the practice of hospitality (as with all ecclesial practices) does not mean somehow learning it as a standard to apply in every situation. Hospitality as a practice is more complex than that and involves developing a range of skills that may be used variously. Not surprisingly, the church’s Eucharistic practice suggests this complexity. For example, sometimes Christian hospitality in the Eucharist requires forgiving others for wrongdoing and ill will (in the passing of the peace); sometimes that hospitality is directed more toward awareness that even strangers are not truly strangers in the Body of Christ (as in the common cup); sometimes it may even require sending strangers to other groups (as with catechumens) as a way of greeting and accepting the guest status of the stranger and not impose the Christian ways immediately on someone perhaps unprepared for that life. The church’s own complexity of practice allows households to develop various hospitable practices and, more important, to recognize that hospitality is not solely about welcoming the abject stranger whom no one in the household knows. Benedict’s monks welcome the stranger as Christ, in the recognition that Christ both is and is not a stranger to them, and this paradox extends to other relationships. Hospitality may also be about recognizing children, housemates, and spouses as guests, since in a way they are all entrusted (and entrust themselves) to the particular community of the household for a short period, but the household does not own them. Children eventually go to college or begin their own professional lives. Housemates come and go. Spouses

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develop and change and become different from the person who was married years ago. This Christian practice requires agility, and it truly requires practice, again and again, in order to learn to be hospitable appropriately. Christians practice this formation weekly in their worship, and daily in their monasteries, intentional communities, and small households.

Meeting and Joining In consequence of considering Christian hospitality in households, one problem arising is the question of how and when people make the switch from being guests in a household to being members. The tendency, in the contemporary era, is to think of membership as primarily being a matter for the individual’s (or individual couple’s) wants and desires. If one wants to join a chess club, then one can join a chess club, and similarly with a congregation. Participation in church becomes a bit like being part of a social club. The individual has quite a bit of freedom to envision himself or herself as part of a community, or not. The Internet perpetuates this sense of individual freedom to a very great degree, since there is little or no stake in someone dropping in and out of discussion forums relating to some topic or community. (It is interesting to consider, however, that there are some forms of belonging people rarely question, particularly that one is born into a national identity that cannot be chosen, no matter how much one may dislike the particulars of any one government.) Church and household suffer from similar views about the primacy of the individual and making decisions about what kinds of communities to join or leave. Observers note, for example, the phenomenon of church shopping or that of leaving a congregation because a beloved pastor also leaves. Others identify the rise of divorce and the concept of ‘‘starter marriage’’ as evidence of changes in thinking about individual autonomy. Loyalty and fidelity, both traditionally instrumental parts of vowed monastic life as well as vowed marriage, become virtues eschewed in favor of personal freedom, and perhaps the ‘‘courage’’ to strike out on one’s own. While this is a prevalent view of individuals in relation to groups, several people have named problems with this way of thinking; not all these voices have been from Christian theological circles. Nick Hornby, for example, writes secular novels addressing questions about the good. His novel About a Boy is principally about two characters: Will Freeman and a twelve-year-old named Marcus. Marcus, the son of a recently divorced and very depressed mother, finds himself as an outcast at a new school and consequently has no friends.

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All the principal characters are questioning a latent assumption that marriage provides the most stable locus in society, but all of them are themselves unstable. By the novel’s end, the characters remain single in a technical sense (none are married), but they have learned to depend on each other in nontraditional ways. For example, Will has developed a friendship with Marcus and his mother (and not in a romantic sense). Hornby shows, via a secular novel, that households in our postmodern world must take on varying configurations, especially because most people are not part of the traditional, much-idealized, marriage with two children. Theologically, the church can and should take up this idea, because it is entirely consistent with scripture and tradition and, indeed, is more consistent a view than that which overidealizes family as the proper way to follow God. What separates a member of a household from a guest of that household? Baptism, once again, shapes Christian communities’ views of membership. The Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox churches, and several mainline denominations treat baptism as a mark of becoming a member of the Body of Christ, as becoming a Christian. The language that surrounds baptismal rites, such as ‘‘new creation’’ and being ‘‘reborn,’’ provides strong parallels to the ways in which children become family members: one is born into the biological family and becomes a member. With baptism, too, one is born into this particular Household of God, though the question of how much ‘‘choice’’ one has in becoming baptized still rages as a debate. There is a sense, in both infant and adult baptism, that God has chosen that person and has graced him or her via prevenient grace. When it comes to small households, however, choice of membership again becomes a question. While children are born into families and do not typically make choices about family membership on those lines, we tend to think that other kinds of joining, like dating and marriage, involve two individuals each making a choice about whether to engage in that relationship. When questions arise about the suitability of dating partners for each other, it seems quite a bit more fashionable to write a letter to a relatively anonymous advice columnist than to seek advice from the various communities of which one is a part. Dating and marriage have great influence on biological family and other community groups, however, so that even secularly there is reason for concern about whom people date and why. This is one of the concerns that some of the commentators tapped for the Religion, Culture, and Family group express about dating, cohabitating, and the rise of divorce, particularly in relation to children. For example, William J. Doherty, professor in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota, suggests:

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christians’ eschatological home I think what started to happen, say, in the early 1990s was some revisiting of the downside of the social revolution that brought us optional marriage and easier divorce. . . . Now I think there is some sense that marriage is pretty fragile, and we need to not only be helping people get out, but we need to help people make a success when they’re in a marriage. . . . One factor is that the children of the divorce revolution are now coming to marriageable age. . . . Their generation’s parents have had high levels of divorce and they’re nervous.21

An identified problem is the couple’s ability (or inability) to support children and even society itself in a world where many marriages do not last; the solution for many of the people cited in the Religion, Culture, and Family Project seems to be more direct involvement in these families by various social agencies. The Household of God should also question social assumptions about individuals, dating, and cohabitating. Socially, dating and cohabiting are about two individuals making a mutual decision about their suitability for each other, usually without a need to consider other people in the equation. This assumption comes most sharply in relief, in fact, when there are other people involved; for example, a man dating a single mother with children might consider that the relationship is simply too complicated because it cannot be only about the two of them. Questioning these kinds of assumptions is most helpful, again, through the lens of baptism. The practice of baptism recognizes that one or two Christians are never simply individuals making decisions on their own, but that they are members of the Body of Christ, and that the community in Christ has a claim on them. There are periods of discernment about making so important and serious a move as being baptized: the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) and baptism classes for parents both give a nod, at least, to communal discernment about joining the community and communal discussions about the seriousness of this kind of decision. Part of the implication of this book’s argument about households in relationship to the Household suggests that dating, engagements, and the period of postulancy for would-be monks should likewise require thoughtful discernment, with the church having a key role to play, in some form or other. This is not simply about having an Engaged Encounter weekend or the typical three premarital counseling sessions, but rather focused discernment and attentive listening to people from various parts of the church (and most probably not the pastor). My work with Augustine suggests that the Christian community bears some responsibility for helping to sort out the smaller households

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within it. Historically, the church has seen fit to approve or disapprove of betrothals, entrances into holy life, and the like. When a couple published wedding banns, for example, that was considered an opportunity for the community of faith to raise objections or questions to the proposed union. A monastic community or a bishop could likewise disapprove of someone making profession of vows during the novitiate phase of life in that household. Indeed, even today, some vestiges of this kind of approval remain. Most pastors are expected to provide premarital counseling to couples, for example. If serious problems show themselves, some pastors refuse to marry the couple or, at the least, postpone the marriage. In our contemporary society, however, the pastor typically bears the sole responsibility for discernment with the couple and feels the fallout when a couple is unhappy with the discussion.

Dating Donna Freitas and Jason King, both scholars trying to develop a theology of dating, point out that there is no normative account at present that helps people think about how to date in a way that helps us live out the Christian life.22 They are exactly correct to note that there is a dearth of serious theological conversation about this particular and unique method leading to marriage and that more needs to be done in relation to the few authors who have discussed dating a bit. Popular Christian writers, especially among evangelicals, have questioned whether dating too much conforms to the modern world; I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris is an example of such a book. Harris writes against current cultural standards about dating, especially the prevalent attitude that dating often leads to sexual intimacy, but not a lifelong commitment, and also the overwhelming cultural message that suggests people who do not date or get married end up unfulfilled. Harris is concerned with some of the same problems mentioned in this book and exhorts his readers to be content with life as a single Christian unless and until God leads them into good marital relationships. David Matzko McCarthy, writing from an academic theological point of view, discusses dating from the vantage point of consumer desires and how those consumer desires interfere with desire rightly ordered to God. McCarthy opens his book Sex and Love in the Home with a story about Dahlia and Alex, and their struggle to bridge the gap between the romance of dating and the domesticity of marriage. The world of dating is about romantic desire and passion, but the world of the home is about the well-run household, which is not apparently romantic. The gap that McCarthy notices centers on the fact that Dahlia is advised (by Glamour magazine) to seek out romance when

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dating, and not ‘‘the kind of guy who would tell a date about his domestic skills and his cooperative orientation to good housekeeping.’’23 Later, in the second chapter, McCarthy discusses how, according to advertisements and media, sex is considered exciting and desirable during dating, but that ‘‘sex dies in the home.’’24 The consumer desire is for that which is new and unexplored, and so the assumption is that because married sex becomes part of a routine, one must perpetuate the sense of consumer desire by contriving new scenes: new romantic getaways, roles, and toys. People do truly wish to find good people to marry, even though they are not always provided the resources with which to do so. The church is highly to blame for this situation, since many of the assumptions at the local parish level are that people will be married, because that is the default state of the good Christian. Many people pine after the ideal marriage and the overromantic assumption of lifelong togetherness, especially in the face of Focus on the Family and some of the other groups I mentioned in the first chapter. Life does not often involve ideals, however. What is needed, in part, is for Christians to be able to tell each other that romantic desire is not the be-all for Christian life and that there are ways of living as a single person that need not end in what is many people’s worst nightmare: to be alone, completely alone, for an entire lifetime, with no one to share the household duties. At the same time, there are married people who feel quite alone and who do not live up to the ideal of the good marriage. Some marriages feel like traps, with people living together but not communicating or understanding each other. Marriage can often be a living hell, a far cry from the ideal image associated with it. Marriage is not the guarantee that one will experience an ‘‘ideal household’’; attention to Christ’s expansive Household in baptism suggests that Christ can burst through even our misplaced ideals. He does not create a new ideal but has a new and very difficult, but real, life. That life might look much different than the one we envision for ourselves: it might be a life of being unmarried and caring for a mentally ill sibling; it might be a life of looking after foster children; it might be a life of living as a Carmelite hermit. Thus, the Christian’s view of dating needs some different narratives and practices than the typical contemporary model affords because the current model focuses on the individual’s needs and desires for a mate (to prevent loneliness, for example) or sexual partner to the near exclusion of any other friendships or perhaps even to the exclusion of relationship with God. To see dating within the context of the Household of God means understanding that one’s relationships should not be directed toward meeting one’s individual desire and also that those relationships can be properly directed toward helping each other in Christian discipleship. Perhaps dating cannot even be counted as

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a Christian practice. The better practice to encourage is developing and maintaining friendships and, in this context, to instill openness about the different directions those friendships might take, such as a married relationship. What I envision is a conversion in thinking, as well as more direct involvement of Christian friends in each other’s development of lifelong relationships, and not exclusively dating relationships either. People are more likely, I think, to keep their friends from buying poorly made cars than to keep them from pursuing poorly made relationships, and they do so in the interest of keeping the individual free to choose for himself or herself. Yet some things are more important than the individual’s right to choose, especially if that person claims a prior relationship to Christ, for some things that I might choose are not the things that will help me develop a relationship with God. The role baptized Christians have as parentes (to refer to Augustine’s term) means that Christians have a responsibility to guide dating relationships toward cultivation of virtue. The interest the Christian community has is twofold: one is concern for the person; the second is knowledge of the connection between resultant small households and the Household of God.

Betrothals and Religious Vocations The Household of God should therefore also bear some responsibility for helping people make discernments about whom to marry and how households might be arranged, but such work should not have to be the pastor’s sole responsibility, any more than the formation of new married couples ought to be a pastor’s sole responsibility. Perhaps it is time, as some scholars have suggested, to resurrect a sustained, church-guided period of engagement, or perhaps betrothal ceremonies. Michael Lawler argues that, in fact, the notion of no sex until a marriage ceremony has been completed reflects an overly Western understanding of marriage. He advocates, instead, for the possibility of a betrothal ceremony that would include church blessings and participation by the Christian community. A marriage ceremony, however, would be celebrated after the birth of the first child, which would be the sign that a marriage has occurred. In Lawler’s view, this kind of progression between betrothal and marriage acknowledges that marriage itself progressively unfolds. Lawler’s suggestion is problematic in that it is not clear how older couples past childbearing age might fit into this scheme. Nor is it clear that marriage ought to be defined to quite this extent by the presence of children; that emphasis would seem to do away with some of Lawler’s other points about other purposes of marriage, such as friendship and unity.

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Also intriguing is Angelo Cardinal Scola, who writes about engagement in the context of considering marriage as a vocation. Vocation, he says, must be ‘‘verified,’’ along the etymological sense of ‘‘verification’’ as fact. Scola’s example is a person who determines he has a vocation to do mission work in Columbia, but the plane is prevented from taking off, so the man is unable to go to Columbia. He does not, in fact, have a vocation to do mission work in Columbia at this time, though he might have a vocation to do mission work elsewhere. The fact of a marriage taking place verifies that a particular man and woman have a specific vocation to marriage with each other. Scola’s point here is important: we cannot have general, vague vocations in the manner of ‘‘I have a vocation to be married.’’ A person may have a desire for marriage generally, and that may or may not be in line with God’s will, but only the verification of marriage to a specific person makes the vocation a fact. Many people wander through their teens and twenties with the idea that they have a general ‘‘vocation’’ to marriage, fueled in part by the cultural assumption that ‘‘everyone’’ gets married. But Scola’s point is that there is only a vocation if there is a marriage. Marriage is a specific vocation to be married to a specific person and thus time bound and communally bound. The only general vocation a Christian has is also the only one that is eternal: to be a witness to Christ. The same point may be made for vowed religious life and various forms of intentional Christian communities: there is a religious vocation only if one is living that life, which in turn must be discerned by the community. The Rule of Saint Benedict notes that there is a period of postulancy, followed by a novitiate, in which both the would-be monk and the community determine their suitability for each other. Most monastic communities today require this kind of communal discernment, so that it is obvious that even if an individual feels a personal desire to join a monastery, personal desire is confirmed by the wisdom and movement of God in that monastery. Other kinds of intentional Christian communities likewise have processes for discerning vocation. That there is a parallel between periods of engagement, periods of postulancy, only underscores that there is a broader connection between all the households of which Christians may be a part. The church’s participation in betrothal, weddings, sacraments of holy orders, and the like verifies specific vocations. As Scola suggests regarding engagements, we cannot make an autonomous decision regarding households and our participation in them, especially when we see them as uniquely related to the Household of God. Christians’ participation in the various liturgies, blessings, and sacraments that surround various households is recognition of that fact. It also serves as a concrete reminder of what was discussed in the

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previous chapter: we understand our daily households, in part, because we have some participation in the church’s own life. To place oneself in this kind of discerning conversation is to admit a certain humility: that one does not have all the answers. It is also a means of trusting and allowing for these communities to help form us in virtue, even if those virtues are not readily apparent at the start.

Procreating and Raising Children My deliberations about Augustine’s views on marriage and procreation in chapter 3 led me to suggest, first, that Christian marriage is a mark of the fact that humans, men and women, are created for fellowship with each other, and, second, that procreation as an activity makes manifest that men and women need each other in order to most completely follow God’s will. Both of these points taken together suggest that the ability to glorify God is a communal activity and must be done in the company of others. Often scholars focus on Augustine’s statements for what they mean about sexual activity,25 but here I wish also to focus on nonsexual activity. After all, Augustine’s views on marriage cannot be subsumed wholly into considerations of what to do with genitals; I have argued that there are at least three specific ends of marriage, two of which have little to do with sex specifically. When we combine this consideration with the thoughts about liturgy, cultivation of virtue, and the Household of God raised in chapters 4 and 5, it becomes clear that even sexual activity and openness to procreation take on a new, expanded character in light of the Parousia, the time when God will be ‘‘all in all.’’ Part of the evidence for this is, once again, in the church’s practice of baptism. Augustine’s sermons about baptism generating new children, and making all Christians new parents suggest a very new and distinctly Christian way of understanding what it means to have and raise children. Given the way I have shown the relationship between the Household of God and daily households, what might the church’s own generativity in baptism suggest about generativity and possibly procreativity for homes? A new infant in Christ is born via baptism into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. New Christians come into being via spiritual generation, as Augustine suggests, and this is one of the ways the unmarried may be parents, because they, too, are responsible for parenting the newly baptized ‘‘infants.’’ Procreation among Christians is part of the worship of God, because it recalls us to God’s blessing and first great command to humanity, as Augustine noted. In Christ, we have been restored to the possibility of heeding God’s

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call and experiencing that blessing once again. Augustine’s view suggests that bodies help us live our Christian lives more thoroughly. God draws people into God’s own life through procreation, because procreating demonstrates from the very beginning of God’s story about humans that the Christian’s first relationship is to God, and human relationships are meant to help each other serve God more fervently. This should provide some further food for thought regarding the muchdebated subject of contraception. Much of what has been written by Catholic moral theologians about contraception focuses intently on the ways in which natural family planning is distinct from contraception in terms of means and ends. That is, proponents of natural family planning have oftentimes focused on distinguishing the ways in which it is distinct from artificial forms of birth control as a means to the end of responsible spacing of children. One argument suggests that by using natural family planning, a couple prevents all artificial barriers from coming between them, and the two are able to offer their good bodies (good because created good) in total gift to the other. For example, Richard Hogan and John LeVoir translate John Paul II’s writing in this way: ‘‘A human person, created in God’s image with a body and a soul, should reflect God, i.e. he/she should love by giving himself/herself unreservedly to others.’’26 When the couple abstains during times of high fertility, they preserve their natures as embodied people, and thus they preserve the meaning of that ‘‘total self-gift.’’ Some theologians writing on the nuptial meaning of the body have put forth an analogical argument that the married couple is like the Trinity, and that the sign and pinnacle of marriage is sexuality. Angelo Cardinal Scola writes, via reflection on von Balthasar, that ‘‘by virtue of analogy, sexual difference (male and female) ultimately rests upon the difference in perfect unity in the Trinity.’’27 Such arguments may be helpful in terms of theological anthropology and understanding the imago dei, but the same problem arises here with sex that we encountered with marriage in chapter 1. There is a point where marriage and the sexual act become so reified, with so many hopes and expectations pinned on them, that they constitute a false eschatological vision. At the same time, celibacy becomes associated with the heavenly world, the true eschatological vision, one that the ‘‘normal’’ person interested in sex could not tolerate. Celibates therefore become the supermen and superwomen, and the rest of the Christians cannot hope to achieve a life of virtue that measures up. Augustine’s discussion of marriage extends beyond this to demonstrate that chastity is not the sole virtue of one’s life, whether married or single, especially in his frequent discussions of the vice of pride versus the virtue of humility. Whether

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celibate or married or single, Christians are all humans living in need of God’s grace and looking forward to the eschaton. In terms of the Catholic Church’s teachings against birth control, it is time to focus on and promote the sections of Humanae vitae that discuss virtue and the ways of living a life in God, rather than continuing to overemphasize ends and means of birth control. Martin Rhonheimer suggests this kind of move as well, though from a different angle, in his book on Thomas Aquinas, natural law, and practical reason. Rhonheimer suggests, rightly, that the chief difficulty in arguments about artificial birth control and natural family planning is that these methods are seen by most moral theologians ‘‘merely as two different methods of not having children.’’28 That is, on many accounts, whether one uses a condom or one avoids sexual intercourse during a fertile phase, the end is the same, and the exact difference between the means is difficult to distinguish rationally. This does depend on the specific method of birth control being considered. Some point out that hormonal forms of birth control are potentially abortifacient, and so the Pill, the NuvaRing, or the hormonal IUD clearly demonstrate different, sinful means. The distinction between barrier methods is less clear, however; both abstinence and condoms or diaphragms physically limit a union of sperm and egg. How is one method of physical separation (diaphragm) morally distinct from another (abstinence)? A focus on virtue (or practical reasoning specifically, in Rhonheimer’s book) necessitates a different question. The question is no longer about the biological nature of a method but, recalling what was said earlier in this chapter, is rather about an entire practice and way of life. On this view, both sexual intercourse and abstinence are actions and require practical reasoning about either action at any given time. But the use of contraception suggests the same object, sexual intercourse, each time it is used, and irrespective of virtue. Using virtue in the conversation changes the nature of what we are speaking about: we are no longer comparing two apparently similar methods but are considering and describing an orientation and range of human action through practical reasoning. Contraception appears actually to limit the range of human activity and possible response on Rhonheimer’s view. Thus he writes: ‘‘[The] virtue of chastity, and the voluntary governing of the sexual drive through abstinence that is ordered to this virtue, form the only humanly adequate basis for a responsible, rational regulation of human procreative power.’’29 The voluntary nature is important because it speaks of human freedom to respond to God’s love reflected in human love. On the Protestant side, relatively little has been written in recent years about contraception, so the assumption is perhaps made that God does not

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care much about whether a couple has children or how many children a couple has. The worry with Protestants and the question of procreation runs almost opposite to the concern about Catholics and procreation. There is a danger of overidealizing certain household forms as normative (two parents, two children), which can overtake obedience toward God’s will in the matter (perhaps no children, perhaps four or five). For example, certain evangelical Protestant groups emphasize the nuclear family; Focus on the Family even demonstrates a certain kind of family through its logo (mom, dad, and one child). Though many theologians have written about giving more leeway to the Protestant model of family, still the assumption in the literature has been toward this small nuclear family.30 Given the relationship between the small households and the Household of God, too, this restricted view of nuclear family inevitably has an effect on the ways in which people view the church. Kathryn Blanchard suggests, in a historical survey of Protestant views on birth control: [The] 1968 Protestant symposium’s [of twenty-five evangelical scholars] well-intentioned affirmation that, ‘‘The partners in marriage should have the privilege of determining the number of children they wish to have in their family,’’ ironically ends up being troubling (rather than a relief ) to scrupulous middle- and upper-class Christian consciences, in that children are no longer seen as gifts from God but as consumer choices in need of explanation.31 The Protestant lack of focus on birth control and children might be redirected toward discerning the blessings of children and not simply assuming that none or one or two children is the aim, simply because ‘‘everyone else’’ is having only one or two children. Blanchard does not take the Catholic view on contraception: she thinks contraception can be a good, when used in concert with discernment about God’s will. Thus she concludes that (for the Reformed tradition in any case): ‘‘With regard to parenting, the fact that Christians live their lives in response to the command of God means that they must inquire of God on (at least) two things: whether or not they should (try to) have children; and if so, how many.’’32 Blanchard’s point is well worth considering for Protestant thought, especially in the context of what I have noted about Augustine’s thoughts on procreation. Obedience to God’s will requires discernment of God’s will and response to that will in an affirmative way. A renewal of Protestant thinking about birth control, in the context of practicing virtues, opens a way toward such obedience. In relation to this kind of serious discernment about the nature of one’s small household, Protestants might also consider other forms of households

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that remain overlooked because of preoccupation with marriage and family. Vowed singleness does not need to seem like a Catholic oddity. It is surprising, somewhat, given Paul’s statements about singleness in 1 Corinthians 7, that more Protestants have not considered lives of holy singleness. There are Protestant monasteries in existence, however, and other types of households that are dedicated toward living single states of life in a holy way. Saint Brigid’s Monastery in Minnesota was begun by a United Methodist woman; the New Monasticism movement, which I discuss in more detail later, comes out of an ecumenical, mostly evangelical Protestant Christian impulse. Furthermore, given what I have suggested in this book about the unity of households, there is a kind of unity present in the fact that the whole of Christian life demands chastity for all, even though that chastity is practiced in varying ways. As a student of mine once remarked, ‘‘I don’t understand why married people get so upset about the Catholic church’s teachings on birth control. I am supposed to be chaste, too, though I’m not married.’’ When we separate our discussions of married life and single life, especially along the lines of sex and the question of chastity, we tend to forget that there is a connection between all these various kinds of households of which I have written. The connection between us Christians runs deeply enough that the ways we treat our bodies in entirety, including sex, become a matter of concern for the whole church. Paul did write in numerous places, after all, about the connections we have with each other as Christians. This is where our ties as baptized members of the Household of God have some precedence over our blood ties to each other. The question about contraception should not be construed narrowly in terms of the one man and one woman who want to use it in their married life together; the question about contraception is one relating to practice of chastity and the virtue of temperance. Chastity is for all people precisely because all of us are connected to each other in the Household of God. In addition, assumptions about practices of sex can also get in the way of responding to others’ needs. For example, Western society often sets up couples to think that their bedroom belongs to sex, but this idolizing of sex and private space for sex can directly conflict with good parenting practices. Faithful abstinence does not mean being attentive only to procreation, but also to the needs of children, which might very well conflict with romantic sex. One question to ask, for instance, is how much of the pressure on parents to prematurely press their children into nighttime ‘‘independence,’’ as well as defining ‘‘good’’ babies as those who sleep through the night (regardless of physical and emotional needs), comes from the idea that the marital bed must be reserved for sex. Moreover, having sex is not, contrary to popular opinion, a

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good idea for married couples at all times. Physical and mental illness, stress, and exhaustion are also good reasons to abstain, as most married couples already know. Marriage is not a relationship in which sex is always possible, or in which no restraints exist, despite some of the popular Christian notions of ‘‘saving oneself for marriage.’’ Premarital chastity is not a temporary condition but one that prepares people for postmarital chastity. Precisely because it is married sex and about a relationship that exists in reference to God, there must be attention to the needs of the other person. An overemphasis on the question about contraception and procreation and its place in marriage matches the cultural overemphasis on sex and sexual imagery seen in various media. All, whether they are married or single, are urged to pare down their lives and remove those things that have become obstacles. Americans are notorious for being greedy and for living in a culture that both glorifies sex and is repelled by it. In this context, natural family planning as periodic abstinence, along with the chastity required of vowed religious people and single people, might be seen as a concerted effort by the Household of God, married and single, against idolization of sex. Sex and procreation themselves do not make up the Household of God, nor are they the be-all and end-all of a life spent following God’s call. Practicing chastity is a call to all Christians toward thoughtful discernment about the household, its size, and its effects on the people within that household, and practicing chastity as a virtue deserves to be more of a front-and-center conversation in both Protestant and Catholic thinking about contraception. Sex and having children are two of the ways we may worship God with our bodies. But, again as Augustine points out, these are not the only ways for worship or for rightly following God’s call and demands upon us. We already know this in a more elementary way when we consider the famed three ends of marriage that Augustine mentions in The Excellence of Marriage. Procreation is not the sole end of marriage. In fact, marriage, on Augustine’s view, is not limited to fidelity, unity, and the procreative goods, even though he highlights these three. It is also related to the good of friendship, as discussed in chapter 3. Augustine follows many other church fathers in proclaiming that true friendship occurs between people concerned toward developing each other in a life of virtue. If we are to be true friends with each other, we hope for the other’s good, and we hope that they will be good. We also hope that those friends will have the same wish for us. Augustine, as a Christian, takes the understanding of friendship beyond this to point out that Christian friends are sustained and helped by God. Christian friends direct each other toward God. This Christian friendship is of the type that both married and single people may have, and are expected to have.33

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Augustine’s view of procreation as being necessarily related to following God’s will takes us in still another direction. The presence of children does not itself legitimate a marriage, and a marriage between two people who are no longer able to conceive is still considered valid. While having children is deemed one of the ends of marriage, there is still not an overfascination with having children. In other words, while children are rightly one of the potential blessings of marriage, having children is not an end to be pursued to the detriment of all else. Children are not things to be desired in a consumer’s sense, acquired and manipulated in the same way that we desire the latest media technology and buy it. This point of Augustine’s coincides most obviously with contemporary discussions about in vitro fertilization and stem-cell research and the ways in which those technologies can foster a consumer approach to having children.34 The baptismal view of households should also lead households to consider parenting in ways that are less often discussed in the context of families. Adoption and foster-child care are two obvious such examples, because these are not children who have been ‘‘designed’’ by their parents genetically. In a legal framework, emphasis has often been put on keeping children with their biological parents because blood ties and genetic relationships are firm connections, culturally. Yet a deep relationship, even deeper than one that is biological, can exist between adoptive parent and adoptive child or foster child. Christians, especially, have every reason to hope this different view of relationship is the case, for Paul writes that we are adopted children of God in Christ, through whom we will also receive God’s inheritance for us (Ephesians 1). God is not our genetic parent, in the sense that humans are divine minigods, and yet God does adopt even human flesh, something distinctly not divine, as worthy of inheritance of God’s own life. For my purposes with this book about households, however, it is also well to consider the way that an overemphasis on thinking of children as ‘‘mine’’ prevents us from recognizing and responding to the ways in which the Household of God re-forms our images of what it means to be children, mothers, and fathers. Baptism is not only a mirror of and for household practices of washing (and hospitality); it also serves as a blatant reminder of the God to whom we belong and to whom our children belong. Yet, Christians also have responsibility for children (young and old, in the baptismal sense). Consider again the significance of godparents (in many churches) for the baptism ritual. Godparents are not a child’s biological parents but represent the Christian parenthood that the church must bestow on its newly baptized members. While they cannot replace the importance of children’s formation among the parents who daily raise them, godparents do denote that this child

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has a greater parent and greater family connection with other Christians in the Household of God. The hope of baptism is that it presents to us that we are related to God in an intimate way. To these particular questions about sex and children in marriage should be added particular questions about sex and being single. We tend to assume that single people nearly always have sex anyway because sex is a physical necessity that cannot be denied. In this context, faithful, holy, celibate people, a celibate priesthood, and the possibility of vowed chastity seem impossible and indeed, are often blamed as a root cause of other problems, such as the sexual abuse scandals in the early part of the twenty-first century. The considerations of Augustine and the Household of God provide a hopeful context for ‘‘dethroning’’ sex from our conversations and attentions. By ‘‘dethroning’’ sex, I do not imply that sex itself is bad, or that sexuality must somehow be repressed. Both of these are arguments that scholars have made about Augustinian views of sexuality. On the contrary, though, Augustine’s point about sexual pleasure and procreation in the context of salvation history is that disordered desire of sex is what is problematic, and not sex itself. Sexual desire can be seen as an end in itself and not related to the ultimate end of happiness in God.35 Augustine’s emphasis is therefore paring down those false desires and conforming the will to God’s will, which suggests that we might recover looking at our uses of sex in terms of obedience to God as well. The contemporary cultural atmosphere is too much like the adolescent Augustine who prayed for chastity, but ‘‘not yet,’’ and who was always focused on his next sexual relationship, often without recognizing the other people involved, or God as one who cared about what happens with sex. The danger of extramarital sex (premarital and adulterous sex) is precisely that it comes without attachments in relationships, so that an individual desire for sexual expression and for sexual feeling remains unchecked by the necessity of attending to those relationships for reasons other than sex. Sex can happen anytime, anywhere, and with anyone. In this scenario, the chances that desire can be directed appropriately for God are much, much smaller. Some will argue that there is no guarantee that this happens in marital sex either; indeed, the claim can be made that most marriage rites are nothing but lip service to the kinds of relationships of which I have been speaking and that the overwhelming presence of divorce in the United States makes this point obvious. Yet, even if all a marriage rite is to a couple is ‘‘lip service,’’ the fact of the rite itself is that the marriage is made in the context of God and a community of persons there to witness the couple make public vows, vows that do not emphasize sex as the reason for marriage. The couple has decided to be public about their relationship and to put that relationship in the context of the

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Household of God. That in itself suggests a possibility for checking and reordering desire, even if ultimately the relationship orders itself more to secondary desires than to its primary one of life in God. Sex in the Household of God assumes that one is part of relationships, not just with the other person in the sexual relationship itself but with all others in the Household of God. It also assumes that sex and abstinence are two of the many actions that people might do in response to God’s revelation. The church often fails to support both these actions. For example, it is assumed that vowed monks, nuns, and priests need counseling and support for a lifetime of celibacy, but it is not likewise assumed that married couples need support for a lifetime of chastity. The same is true, particularly in a sexualized culture, of all singles and all married couples; chastity should not be left to the individual’s willpower alone. The baptized are dependent on each other to help each other toward the ultimate end in God.

Domiciling and Depending The focus on the church’s liturgy and sacraments, particularly baptism, highlights that Christians are dependent. To be dependent on someone else is part of participation in social life, and that dependency is present no matter what the configuration of my particular household is. I think of the monastery I visit frequently, where dependency shows up in any number of interactions: serving food to each monk, caring for the monks who have Alzheimer’s disease, asking someone to turn down the radio. And I think of my own household of one married couple. We need each other to do things for the other and for the smooth functioning of the household: pay the bills, buy the groceries, make food, take out the garbage. I think, as well, of my widowed grandmothers, each living on her own in her own house, but each dependent on others for yard work, meals-on-wheels, medical care, and the like. And I think of the single friends I have, who live on their own, no roommates to please. These are the people we are most often apt to think of as not exhibiting dependency, and yet these do, as well. They are dependent on landlords to fix the plumbing, friends who watch the cat or the plant while they are away from home, family who show up or call on occasion to make sure things are going well. It is a myth of contemporary society and some contemporary theology to see that households can be self-sufficiently run. We see this sense of selfsufficiency in the view that parents alone are responsible for how their children behave in grocery stores or in church. (‘‘How could that mother let her

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three-year-old run around that way? It disturbed everyone else’s ability to concentrate on the homily!’’) We see this sense of self-sufficiency in the widespread expectation that the elderly and the sick are impositions because, after all, if they were able to take care of themselves, they would not be burdens on society. Self-sufficiency is one primary concern with those theologies that put marriage and family on a pedestal or infuse them with high idealism, that seem to suggest that the rightly ordered family will necessarily make society the best possible society. David Matzko McCarthy has rightly demystified overly romantic views of marriage and sex as the be-all and end-all in his recent book Sex and Love in the Home: A Theology of the Household. These may, at points, be part of a marriage, but marriage and its goods are not limited to these conceptions. On McCarthy’s view, a marriage is oriented toward ordinary activities of the daily household, as well as to the wider group of friends and fellowship. That is to say, marriage and family cannot be sustained without relationships that move beyond attention to the daily cares of the family. This is true of the various kinds of single households as well. If we begin to meditate much on the relationship of marriage and family, we must come up against the dependencies of this particular state of life on other groups. However, we must also begin to recognize the dependencies that single households, as well as the vowed celibate states of life, have on families. We see this historically in the way that abbeys and monasteries have long been housed and supported on the lands of wealthy families. (In many cases, these wealthy families also supplied the abbots and abbesses.) Many families, poor and rich, have sustained the monastic way of life with money, food, and other kinds of donations, in exchange for prayers. We members of the church are never self-sufficient, especially in our households. The fact of our dependency on each other suggests another way, however. Augustine’s point about the fact of our baptism and its relationship to our roles as both parents and children suggests that non–biologically related people have a responsibility to raise children. This does not need to take the form of criticism of the parents, but of a more constructive and formative variety: why don’t more singles in churches teach Sunday School, for example? This is especially so for any people who are concerned about how parents let their children run wild in church. They might need to be reinforcing the message themselves by volunteering to teach Christian education, and in introducing children to the ideas of sacred time and space, and theology. This is not to supplant biological parents or to dismiss any influence parents have on their children, but it is to suggest that Christians, who have ties to each other that are stronger than blood, might do more toward constructive formation than negative criticism.

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A second practical consideration that arises is the question of household ordering. Culturally, there is the idea that the good home is the one with several bedrooms, a large yard, and several bathrooms. The good home is not, by typical white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class, Protestant cultural standards, the duplex with the nonexistent sandy yard. But if we do truly believe that water is thicker than blood, it is also necessary to question the assumption that only those with specific blood ties ought to be living together. As one Mennonite friend put it, ‘‘Why is it that we assume that the standard is one large home per family?’’ The consideration of our dependency on each other calls us, again, to the realization that households do not have a single standard configuration. Foster children and adoption again provide two examples, which I discussed in greater detail earlier. Living with an elderly friend provides another. Less obvious examples, though, include groups like the New Monasticism movement. The New Monasticism, suggested by Jonathon Wilson and founded by his daughter and son-in-law, Leah and Jonathon Wilson Hartgrove, is a loosely connected group of intentional Christian communities that include both married and single people. This collection of communities has maintained the need for each separate community to have its own household rules or agreements for how to live. At the same time, the New Monastic movement communities have made agreements with each other to incorporate a set of twelve marks of living Christlike lives into their communal living, which mark them out as part of the New Monasticism movement. The movement is especially interesting because it rejects the traditional dichotomy between monks and married people and instead strives to incorporate both into its vision. Examples of New Monastic communities include older, more established houses (some Catholic Worker houses), communities founded in the heyday of the 1960s (Reba House), as well as newer groups, such as the Rutba House in Durham, North Carolina, and the Simple Way from Pennsylvania.

Body Questions Moreover, if our relationships with each other have been restored in Christ, then relationships between men and women are more marked by that redemption than by the fall. What we seek since Christ’s coming is that new relationship that has already been given to us, the one that restores our enjoyment of God as well as each other, as humans. We know this restored relationship in our baptisms and at the Eucharistic table in the Household of God, with people to whom we are not so closely connected as spouses, children, or housemates. Christians share with each other the sign of peace at

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worship, an indication of a certain kind of equality that recognizes, ‘‘I am a creature like you. I have been created and redeemed by God like you. With you, I am waiting for the time when God will be all-in-all, when our relationships will take on a character entirely new and not-yet-quite known.’’ This is a very different kind of equality, though, than the kind that suggests we are all the same, in body and soul. Lisa Cahill rightly notes that viewing everyone as the same dismisses the point that our bodies influence who we are as people. Making equality about the erasure of differences also runs the risk of perpetuating lies and continued inequality. That is to say, we end up trying to live under the forced impression of sexual equality without paying attention to the differences that we all have and must learn to live with. David Matzko McCarthy suggests as well that ‘‘under the guise of equal access, sexual inequalities are perpetuated. Sexual availability, for instance, often characterizes what it means to be female, and sexual opportunism is the nomenclature of being male.’’36 The theological point of this difference within the household is that it is necessary to recognizing how virtue and growth in Christian life may happen. We are dependent on each other precisely because we are different from each other. The roles and functions that we may have do not necessarily need to relate to bodily difference (e.g., being a man or a woman, or being disabled). What Augustine reminds us of is the dependence that we have on each other. Men and women need each other in order to serve God rightly, but that does not translate into needing the other person in a mechanical or role-based way. As David Matzko McCarthy points out, women are not ‘‘auxiliary agents’’ for men; they have been created as human as well. Whether or not Augustine would actually maintain what I claim here about gender, the method of his theology suggests that men do not need women out of some traditional notion of needing women to be the maid and the cook in the household and women likewise do not need men for the purpose of doing household repair and the outdoor work (to use more traditional dichotomies). Rather, because of Augustine’s emphasis on obedience to God, the kind of need men and women have for each other is directed toward living life together and learning from each other the kind of life we need to live. Again, these are not friendships borne solely out of necessity for material goods, at least from the Christian point of view, but from a recognition of dependency that is centered on the fact that when we were created, we were created to be in fellowship with each other. We do need each other, for material goods such as food, clothing, and shelter, but also for less obvious needs and wants. We need each other, in part, because we are different. Learning how to live with each other, with all the differences

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too, is part of learning to love more and more deeply. But these differences in gender do not necessarily mean differences in function. Learning to live with difference relates, as well, to those who are often deemed weaker, or less able to be part of the household. I am thinking here specifically of very young children, those with disabilities or terminal diseases, and the very old, whose bodies tend to be seen as problems to be solved in contemporary culture. A baby always needs diapers changed, and its parents must learn to deal with urine and feces; older bodies move more slowly and cause us to halt from our busy lives; those with disabilities have varying needs, physically and mentally, that cause a disruption for ‘‘normal’’ people. Yet it is the very point of bodily difference with which we must learn to live, that has the potential to increase our understanding of the theological virtue of love. As Paul says of the Eucharistic meal, ‘‘Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.’’37 This is related to the concern that some bioethicists have with regard to cloning and in vitro fertilization. It seems too much like the twentieth-century eugenics movement, in which we (Americans as well as the more notoriously known Nazi workshops) tried to create perfect societies of our own making. People then perpetuated the perfect family, blond-haired, blue-eyed, with the exact right number of children, disseminated in advertisements and articles. Amy Laura Hall has suggested that this sinful tendency of humans, to want to make everyone appear the same, comes across in such diverse objects as the advertising of the human genome project to the way baby products are marketed.38 Another example is the way in which families are considered in contemporary culture. Julie Hanlon Rubio notes a few problematic divides in culture concerning families: postmodernists ‘‘want to affirm peoples’ right to live and love in the families of their choosing,’’ while modernists ‘‘want to preserve the ideal of ‘the family’ and, they claim, the culture itself.’’39 Likewise, there is a ‘‘liberal/conservative’’ divide that appears to pit single-parent families and other nontraditional families against their more traditional counterparts. The point is that we appear to believe, again and again, that the well-functioning household will ‘‘look’’ a certain way and cause certain kinds of perfection that are inscribed by our culture, whether that is the ‘‘diverse family’’ or the ‘‘traditional family.’’ But the question raised by this sameness is the one raised in science fiction novels and movies like Star Wars (with the empire robot clones): if we all look and act the same, do we really know how to love, in the theological sense? That is to say, if we cannot even figure out ways to love the difference in others without succumbing to the desire to make us all the same, do we know how to love God, who is supremely different from us? Rubio attends to this

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problem by suggesting that the church has resources for families but ‘‘does not give them a blueprint of how to conduct their family life. . . . They present a moral vision; it is up to families to fill in the details.’’40 Ecclesial difference is another ‘‘bodily difference’’ in the sense of the Body of Christ and Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic tensions. Weddings can demonstrate these tensions in ways that no other ritual does, but often ritual is watered down in favor of ideas borrowed from secular weddings: readings (poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke), music (‘‘Storybook Love’’ from the movie The Princess Bride), and ritual (unity candles) intended to demonstrate ‘‘meaning’’ and a couple’s unity at the expense of the relationship in Christ. After all, the reasoning goes, this wedding ritual is about unity, and so unity must be displayed, even if the ritual becomes something no longer about the mystery of God in Christ. Part of the issue, too, is about who is invited to weddings. Weddings and wedding receptions are often restricted to family members and close friends, an ironic point for Christian weddings when one considers Jesus’ parable about wedding banquets and inviting people from the streets, good and bad, to the wedding feast.41 The rise of luxury weddings and destination weddings and their expense compound the problem. When people celebrate wedding liturgies only in the context of the two families and closest friends of the couple at a vacation destination, it is more difficult to pay attention to the theological implications of the household and the church. Since Vatican II and the liturgical reforms in the twentieth century, a focus for Protestant and Catholic discussions of weddings has been to pattern them after the Sunday worship because the wedding takes place in the assembly of Christians and its worship of God.42 Some even advocate that weddings be celebrated during Sunday worship. This is where the Household of God is most clearly intertwined with a new household being formed. The difficult questions raised by a wedding between a Protestant and a Catholic ought to make visible the rifts in the Western church especially, and ought to cause us enough consternation to think theologically about Christian divisions. Traditional monastic households, as well as newer communities like the New Monasticism, have had to address the difficulties that ecumenism raises, too. Despite a sharp rise in ecumenical movements after Vatican II, ecumenism has seemed lately to be on the decline. People have raised criticisms against ecumenism as being a top-down phenomenon, in which mostly bureaucracies participate, but ‘‘ordinary’’ people do not benefit. It is the daily household, however, that provides proof against this. In many ways, I think the ecumenical movement is being done most powerfully in our small churches, our households. Ecumenical dialogue happens between parents of different faiths who wrestle contentiously with whether to baptize their babies in ‘‘her

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church,’’ which baptizes infants, or ‘‘his church,’’ which baptizes adult believers. It happens as well between neighbors, and between those who intentionally try to live together ecumenically.

Conclusions: Inhabiting and Habituating All of the variants of households mentioned in this chapter are only intelligible in the context of the church, as told in its liturgy. The church is the place where all creation experiences disrupted fellowship with others, and interrupted family ties, in favor of a primary relationship with Jesus Christ. Thus, human relationships expand to become part of Christ’s body. What we see already in the church and what we will know completely at the eschaton is that Christ truly is all-in-all, encompassing all of created life. There can no longer be dichotomies of the sort that humans like to perpetuate. Here is where we know the truth of what was said in chapter 2: that male and female can no longer treat each other as distant or even alien objects; Christian marriage matters because of the relationships that it restores, when viewed as part of the salvation story. Some of the feminist theorists encountered in chapter 1 are wrong, therefore, to see that marriage can be done away with or that gender does not ultimately matter. Here, too, is where we know the truth of what was said about redemption and eschatology: that there cannot be an intelligible dichotomy between Christian states of life because a life of holiness, via God’s grace, is what must be prayed for and sought after. The theologies of both Don Browning and the ‘‘domestic church’’ do not go far enough in accounting for this virtuous life. My aim in this book has been to suggest a theological vision in which we understand ourselves first as members of the Body of Christ, and therefore as having a unified history that participates in God’s grace. Only by keeping this vision in mind do we rightly understand how marriage and various states of singleness, as households, relate to the church and to each other. A related point has been that households are one of the primary places where virtues are learned, as a means for achieving our end, which is happiness in God. I suggested in the introduction that the debate about marriage has become largely sociological and overly determined as a marker for a ‘‘good’’ society. It has become too focused on the ordering of society and relationships between people without proper reference to the ends of those relationships. The ends, too often, are deemed to be proper functioning of society and a well-ordered state, as we have seen in Don Browning’s account. Browning, and others in the Chicago group such as Stephen Post, want to be faithful to the understanding of marriage as a natural good but also want marriage to have theological import

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of the kind that suggests a more sacramental nature than is often conceived in Protestant circles. Augustine, however, gives us a different account. He shows how it is that the temporal claims and the supernatural claims coexist here and now, because Christians truly are awaiting the time when Christ will come again. The waiting itself has become a way of life for Christians. The action and contemplation that Christians do as they inhabit this world and look to the next resonate as an entire life of prayer to God. Augustine’s partially realized eschatology infuses a sense of hope into inhabiting this world because people recognize glimpses of that future world now. Most especially, the households that they inhabit take on eschatological weight in light of baptism, which radically transforms households into a new, cruciform life in Christ. Strangely enough, much of this formation takes place in small, habitual action: passing the peace, eating together, bathing, and the like. It is these small, seemingly insignificant rituals that demonstrate that Christ’s presence affects even the smallest element of life and that, taken together form an entire Household. Inhabiting that House, and allowing it to inhabit and form us in daily life, habituates us to the life of Christ.

Notes

chapter 1 1. Stephen G. Post, More Lasting Unions: Christianity, the Family and Society, ed. Don Browning and John Wall (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 1. 2. Pope John Paul II, On the Family: Apostolic Exhortation of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to the Episcopate . . . (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1982), x1. 3. Ibid., x6. 4. Most of the people now involved in the project present a particularly American point of view, but the project does aim to be global in scope. 5. The Religion, Culture, and Family Project, ‘‘Project Overview: Rationale of Project,’’ http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/research/rcfp/ projrationale.htm (Accessed August 20, 2007). 6. Though there are many scholars I could mention in connection to the Religion, Culture, and Family Project, here I shall focus almost exclusively on Don Browning because he is the main mastermind for the group, and his voice is clearly present in much of its published work. My assessment of Don Browning should not, however, be seen as a blanket assessment of all the scholars connected with the project. 7. Don Browning, Marriage and Modernization: How Globalization Threatens Marriage and What to Do about It, ed. Don Browning and David Clairmont (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 48. 8. Ibid., 53. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 151. 11. Ibid., 43.

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notes to pages 7–9

12. He relies on the likes of Martha Nussbaum and Susan Moller Okin, for instance, as two scholars who deal with the rights of women while also noting crosscultural specificities. Okin advocates looking after the rights of the individual where a girl’s or woman’s culture especially acts in patriarchal ways. She sees that ‘‘culture’’ and respect for ‘‘group rights’’ over against ‘‘individual rights’’ are often the problem and that women’s equality needs to be wholly accepted. Nussbaum is sympathetic to Okin but offers a somewhat thicker account by developing the idea of political liberalism by trying to achieve liberal ends while yet allowing for some freedom of minority groups to express their own views and practices that may be at odds with the majority view. This she does by introducing the idea of human capabilities; she puts forth several guidelines for what are capabilities and means of human flourishing, which minority groups ought to respect, but then allows that different groups might live out those means and capabilities in different ways. Nussbaum recognizes that there are critiques of universalism, especially along the lines of universal ideals being a particularly Western construct; nonetheless, she thinks there is space enough for traditional societies to be able to express themselves while also affording liberal societies the opportunity to critique them. See Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Susan Moller Okin, ‘‘Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?’’ in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? ed. Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard, and Martha C. Nussbaum (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 13. Browning, Marriage and Modernization, 145ff. 14. Okin, ‘‘Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?’’ 13. 15. Browning, Marriage and Modernization, 43. See also chapter 4 of his book. 16. Issues about equality in marriage have been raised in the last few decades by such scholars as Lisa Sowle Cahill and Michael Lawler. Cahill raises a good point about recent scholarship in marriage and theology by saying that younger scholars such as David Matzko McCarthy and Julie Hanlon Rubio take equality in marriage as a matter of course and have done their work solely with the positive assumptions of Vatican II. Recent scholarship relies, for the most part, on the assumptions of some basis of equality; scholars have not always been able to make such assumptions, and so earlier work has rightly held different emphases. See Lisa Sowle Cahill’s article ‘‘Marriage: Developments in Catholic Theology and Ethics,’’ Theological Studies 64, no. 1 (March 2003): 78–105. 17. Don Browning, ‘‘Christian Ethics and the Family Debate: An Overview,’’ University of Chicago, the Religion, Culture, and Family Project, http://divinity .uchicago.edu/family/index.html (Accessed September 8, 2004). 18. John Witte Jr., cited in Katherine Anderson, Don Browning, and Brian Boyer, eds., Marriage: Just a Piece of Paper? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 410. 19. George W. Bush, ‘‘President Calls for Constitutional Amendment Protecting Marriage,’’ Office of the Press Secretary, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2004/02/20040224–2.html (Accessed August 17, 2007). 20. Several theological doctrines may be named here as being ‘‘social’’ doctrines in the sense that in them theologians have named how God and humans are inextricably related: Trinitarian thought, ecclesiology, and soteriology are but a few.


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21. The phrase ‘‘domestic church’’ is often connected to John Chrysostom’s works, but Chrysostom himself used the phrase minusculae ecclesiae (miniature churches). 22. Michael A. Fahey, ‘‘The Christian Family as Domestic Church at Vatican II,’’ in The Family, ed. Lisa Sowle Cahill and Dietmar Mieth (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 85. 23. Ibid., 86. 24. Regarding John Chrysostom’s work, the committee members made reference to Sermon 20, where he says, ‘‘Seek the things which please God, and those which please man will follow soon enough. Instruct your wife, and your whole household will be in order and harmony. . . . If we regulate our households in this way we will also be fit to oversee the Church, for indeed the household is a little Church. Therefore, it is possible for us to surpass all others in virtue by becoming good husbands and wives.’’ John Chrysostom, On Marriage and Family Life, trans. Catherine P. Roth and David Anderson (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 57. From Augustine’s work, the Vatican II fathers noted a passage in On the Good of Widowhood. This work is a letter written to a woman named Juliana but for a wider audience than she alone. In the letter he addresses the several ways in which holy widowhood might be lived. In the Post-Nicene and Nicene Fathers translation, Augustine closes the letter by saying, ‘‘I entreat you, by Him, from Whom ye have received this gift, and hope for the rewards of this gift [holy widowhood], that ye be mindful to set me also in your prayers with all your household Church.’’ Augustine, On the Excellence of Widowhood, in Augustin: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. C. L. Cornish (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999), x29. This translation appears to follow Augustine’s words in the Latin more closely for he uses the phrase domestica ecclesia in PL’s version of De bono viduitatis, found in Patrologia Latina: the full text database ([Ann Arbor, MI?]: ProQuest Information and Learning Company), 40: 429–50. 25. Fahey, ‘‘The Christian Family as Domestic Church at Vatican II,’’ 89. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 91. 28. James B. McGinnis and Kathleen McGinnis, ‘‘Family as Domestic Church,’’ in One Hundred Years of Catholic Social Thought, ed. John A. Coleman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 120–21. 29. ‘‘Declaration on Christian Education,’’ in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter Abbott, S.J. (New York: Guild Press, 1966), no. 3, cited in McGinnis and McGinnis, ‘‘Family as Domestic Church,’’ 125–26. 30. McGinnis and McGinnis, ‘‘Family as Domestic Church,’’ 125. 31. Ibid., 129. 32. Ibid., 131. 33. Lisa Sowle Cahill, Family: A Christian Social Perspective (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2000), 56, citing John Chrysostom, Vainglory, in Max Ludwig Wolfram Laistner, Christianity and Pagan Culture in the Later Roman Empire; Together with an English Translation of John Chrysostom’s Address on Vainglory and the

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Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1951). 34. Cahill, Family, 60; emphasis in original. 35. Ibid., 83. 36. Margaret Farley, ‘‘Church and Family,’’ cited in ibid., 93. 37. David Matzko McCarthy, Sex and Love in the Home (London: SCM, 2001), 110. 38. ‘‘The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated as a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, in order that through all those works which are those of the Christian man they may offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim the power of Him who has called them out of darkness into His marvelous light.’’ Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen gentium. Solemnly Promulgated by His Holiness, Pope Paul VI on November 21, 1964, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/ vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html (Accessed August 20, 2007). 39. John Paul II writes, ‘‘The family is a living image and historical representation of the mystery of the Church.’’ Pope John Paul II, Familiaris consortio, x49. Cf. x21. 40. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen gentium, 2, x11. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., 4, x35. 43. Pope John Paul II, Theology of Marriage and Celibacy: Catechesis on Marriage and Celibacy in Light of the Resurrection of the Body (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1986), 18. 44. John Paul II suggests that it is virginity and freedom from the necessity of sex and the children that come with it that constitute the eschatological future of humankind. Ibid., 29. Against this reading, David Cloutier rightly suggests, ‘‘Such a conclusion involves a difficult reading of the Genesis narrative, however, because original prelapsarian maleness and femaleness are affirmed as enduring, and yet their (also original prelapsarian) union is denied the same significance.’’ David Cloutier, ‘‘Composing Love Songs for the Kingdom of God? Creation and Eschatology in Catholic Sexual Ethics,’’ Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 24, no. 2 (2004): 75. 45. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen gentium, 7, x50. 46. Ibid., 1, x8. 47. Indeed, Lumen gentium deals quite extensively with baptism and the part of the baptized in the church. People enter the church through baptism and are named Christians because of that baptism. The question at issue here is whether ‘‘domestic church’’ has any part in that baptism. 48. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen gentium, 4, x36. 49. I think it could be said that the Religion, Culture, and Family Project does see itself along those lines: religion can remedy the institution of marriage, which is


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beset by divorce, problems with raising children, the question of gay marriages, and the like. 50. Pope John Paul II, ‘‘Man Enters the World As a Subject of Truth and Love,’’ in The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), 76. 51. See Pope John Paul II, ‘‘Christ Opened Marriage to the Saving Action of God’’ in The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997). 52. Pope John Paul II, ‘‘The Marriage Sacrament Is an Effective Sign of God’s Saving Power’’ in The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), 350. 53. Mark 12:25. Biblical scholars note that in the context of this passage, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Scribes each come forward with their problems with Jesus’ theology. This verse from Mark comes from the Sadducees’ problems with the resurrection of the body, and they bring up the question by asking what will happen in the resurrection if a widow marries seven brothers in succession. The Sadducees’ point here is that, of course, a notion of resurrection is ridiculous and the succession of marriages proves that. The question is whether Jesus is critiquing the Sadducees’ particular view of marriage, bodies, and death in relation to the resurrection and eschatology, or whether he is making a general statement about marriage. Jesus’ response is a specific rebuttal against the Sadducees’ idea that resurrection somehow continues life in the way that we have always known it, so Jesus’ statement in verse 27 suggests that our very lives are transformed, our understanding of death and bodies must be transformed through God’s power. On another view, it also appears that Jesus is speaking against the particular view of needing to have a child, for the Sadduccees’ point is that none of the brothers bear children. For considerations of this text, see James Luther Mays, ‘‘ ‘Is This Not Why You Are Wrong? Exegetical Reflections on Mark 12:18–27,’’ Interpretation 60, no. 1 (January 2006): 32– 46; Gerald J. Jansen, ‘‘Resurrection and Hermeneutics: Exodus 3:6 in Mark 12:26,’’ Journal for the Study of the New Testament, no. 23 (February 1985): 43–58. Thus, is the idea of marriage also so transformed beyond the Sadducees’ imagining? The implication from other scriptures is that perhaps it is, for Jesus is elsewhere described precisely as the Bridegroom and the church as Bride. In a way, all Christ’s members are given in marriage, but in a radically different way than the Sadducees believe—just as the resurrection of the dead and communion with God will happen in radically different ways. 54. Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1995), x1116. 55. Ibid., x1130. 56. Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, trans. Patrick Madigan, S.J., and Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 240. 57. Lisa Sowle Cahill, Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 203.

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58. Angelo Cardinal Scola, The Nuptial Mystery, trans. Michelle K. Borras (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 18–19. 59. Boyer, Brian, Cokie Roberts, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Marriage: Just a Piece of Paper? VHS, directed by Brian Boyer (Chicago: University of Chicago and WTTW-TV, 2002). 60. Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003). 61. Other feminists who wrote prominently against marriage as good for women include Kate Millett and Germaine Greer. 62. At least, so Jane Gerhard argues. Gerhard claims that ‘‘the blending of sexual freedom, broadly defined, and women’s liberation was the characteristic feature of second-wave feminism. Unlike first- and third-wave feminists, second-wave feminists saw the politics of private life as the source of women’s oppression. For second-wave feminists, the relationships between men and women constituted the very infrastructure upon which other oppressions relied.’’ Jane Gerhard, Desiring Revolution: Second-Wave Feminism and the Rewriting of American Sexual Thought 1920–1982 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 194. 63. See, for instance, Michel Foucault’s three-part History of Sexuality. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1990); Foucault, The History of Sexuality: The Care of the Self (New York: Vintage Books, 1990); Foucault, The History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). 64. Andreas Kostenberger, ‘‘Feminism, Family and the Bible: A Biblical Assessment of Feminism’s Impact on American Families,’’ The Howard Center, 2006, http://www.profam.org/pub/rs/rs.2301.htm (Accessed January 7, 2007) 65. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), 113. 66. Ibid., 233. 67. Andreas Kostenberger, God, Marriage and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), especially chapter 12. 68. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, 157–58. 69. See chapter 9 of McCarthy, Sex and Love in the Home. 70. Ibid., 195. 71. Florence Caffrey Bourg, Where Two or Three Are Gathered: Christian Families as Domestic Churches (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 6. 72. See Natalie Schwartzberg, Kathy Berliner, and Demaris Jacob, Single in a Married World: A Life Cycle Framework for Working with the Unmarried Adult (New York: Norton, 1995). 73. Post, More Lasting Unions, 36. The problem with stating it quite like he does above, however, is that it seems that the point of Christianity is to make one a ‘‘full’’ person. 74. Albert Y. Hsu, Singles at the Crossroads: A Fresh Perspective on Christian Singleness (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 46– 47. While I do not think, as


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Hsu does, that it is clear that marriage should be honored equally with singleness, I do think that Hsu is correct in his assessment of the problem. 75. McCarthy, Sex and Love in the Home. 76. Ibid., 214. 77. It must be noted that singleness, virginity, and celibacy are not the same. Singleness is not yet a theological category; rather, the term more often refers to a person’s sociological position via the lack of marriage (i.e., one who is divorced, widowed, engaged, dating, or in between dates). It might also refer to a person’s lack of a theological category or ‘‘state of life,’’ as in marriage or celibacy proper. The lack of clarity regarding singleness is precisely the reason I cannot deal fully with ‘‘singleness’’ in this book, though I do think that the increasing numbers of single people merit theological attention. Marriage and celibacy are states that require vows and thus have been seen to have much different import than a life of singleness, where vows are not really at issue. Virginity and chastity, on the other hand, are often noted as virtues; on this point, see Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica II-II.151–153. See also Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian State of Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983). To complicate matters, however, Augustine does see virginitas as a vowed state of life in his treatise Holy Virginity. When I discuss virginity with respect to Augustine, therefore, I am using it in his sense. 78. Angelo Cardinal Scola has an interesting chapter on public/private dichotomies and marriage in his book. See Scola, The Nuptial Mystery, especially chapter 7. 79. See, for example, Joan B. Landes, ‘‘Further Thoughts on the Public/Private Distinction,’’ Journal of Women’s History 15, no. 2 (2003): 28–39. 80. See Leonore Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (New York: Routledge, 1995). 81. Bernd Wannenwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens, trans. Margaret Kohl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 237. 82. The public/private dichotomy may not be as evident as the others: consider, for example, Jesus’ admonitions in Matthew 6 not to be like the hypocrites who give alms, fast, and pray in public, or that Jesus withdraws to pray in ‘‘private’’ (Luke 9:18). Jesus makes these distinctions, but they are not, I suggest, distinctions meant to separate institutions but rather to school individuals in following a particular way of life. 83. Wannenwetsch, Political Worship, especially chapters 6 and 8. 84. Eph. 2:19. 85. 1 Tim. 3, NRSV. 86. Titus 1:10–11, NRSV. 87. Eph. 2:19. 88. Cf. Col. 3:18–4:1; Eph. 5:22–6:9; 1 Pet. 2:18–3:6. 89. 1 Tim. 3:1–5. 90. Consider the laws about marriage in Deuteronomy 22, for example, or Jesus’ statements about divorce in Matthew 5. 91. See, for example, Carolyn Osiek and David L. Balch, The New Testament World: Households and House Churches (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997).

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92. Bourg, Where Two or Three Are Gathered. 93. Julie Hanlon Rubio writes, for example: ‘‘Books like this one used to speak about ‘the family.’ Nowadays, many people feel that it is less and less appropriate to use this monolithic term. Instead, they talk about a diversity of ‘families.’ ’’ Julie Hanlon Rubio, A Christian Theology of Marriage and Family (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 3. 94. Thomas E. Breidenthal, Christian Households: The Sanctification of Nearness (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1997), 2.

chapter 2 1. Stanley M. Hauerwas and Samuel Wells, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 13. 2. The one-in-two statistic is highly suspect. The current suggested figure is more around 40 percent, even though articles citing divorce will still often rely on the 50 percent figure. See Dan Hurley, ‘‘Divorce Rate: It’s Not as High as You Think,’’ New York Times, April 19, 2005, F7. 3. See, for example, Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially (reprint; New York: Broadway Books, 2001); and Bella dePaulo, Singled Out: How Single People Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006). 4. George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984), 117. 5. The Greek New Testament, ed. Barbara Aland et al., 4th revised edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft; United Bible Societies, 1998); translation mine. The first set of bracketed words are an addition found in Augustine’s version of the story (autoń eiB toń oikon autZ B), along with several other early manuscripts, including B kai were not Coptic and Syriac versions, whereas the latter bracketed words merina found in Augustine’s usage. Cf. footnote 6 in Aland’s edition for more on the Greek and Latin fathers’ uses of the text. Interpretation of this passage can prove difficult because verse 41 could be translated as ‘‘one thing is needful’’ or ‘‘few things are needful or one,’’ depending on which of the six major textual variations one uses. For an excellent dissemination of textual issues, see Jutta Brutscheck, Die Maria-Marta¨ hlung: Eine redaktionskritische Untersuchung zu Lk 10, 38–42, vol. Bonner Biblische Erza Beitra¨ge 64 (Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1986). See further John Nolland, ‘‘Luke 10:38–42,’’ in Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas, TX: Word Books Publisher, 1993). 6. 2 Thess. 3:12 7. This view of Martha has been prevalent even though nothing in the text specifies that Martha was married. 8. Elizabeth Schu¨ssler-Fiorenza and Herman Waetjen, Theological Criteria and Historical Reconstruction: Martha and Mary: Luke 10:38– 42: Protocol of the Fifty-third Colloquy, 10 April 1986 (Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, 1987), 4–5.


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9. Ibid., 9. 10. Jo Ann McNamara, A New Song: Celibate Women in the First Three Christian Centuries (New York: Institute for Research in History, Haworth Press, 1983). She continues this theme in her book Sisters in Arms, though with a twist. In the latter book, McNamara suggests that the best community for women is a double monastery, that is, one composed of both men and women living together as celibates. Jo Ann McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). 11. Stevan Davies, ‘‘Women in the Third Gospel and the New Testament Apocrypha,’’ in ‘‘Women Like This’’: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Amy Jill Levine (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 186. 12. Augustine, The Excellence of Marriage, in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 8, 8. In this book, I have usually chosen to use The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, but where this edition was unavailable, I have used other translations, as noted. 13. Schu¨ssler-Fiorenza’s reading of Augustine on this passage is wrong; she sees him as viewing Martha and Mary as types for the world now and the world to come, and, therefore, as setting up antagonistic poles between the two women. But Augustine is neither providing a purely ‘‘abstractionist’’ account of Mary and Martha (that is, he is concerned about how this passage speaks to the lives of the women in his parish, and not simply about eschatological viewpoints), nor is he truly pitting the two against each other. See Schu¨ssler-Fiorenza, ‘‘Theological Criteria and Historical Reconstruction,’’ 5. 14. Augustine, Holy Virginity, in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 29, 29. 15. Using the word ‘‘singleness’’ here is admittedly vague and unsatisfactory, especially for theological discussion. Until the past thirty years or so, ‘‘singleness’’ was not a word that came up in theological discourse, but it is now part of common discussion. I use it here to distinguish marriage from all other possible living arrangements, but I will discuss the use of ‘‘single’’ and ‘‘singleness’’ further in chapter 4. 16. Cited in David Hunter, ‘‘General Introduction,’’ in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 15. For more on the Jovinian-Jerome debate, see Siricius, Letter 7 in Patrologia Latina (PL): The full text database ([Ann Arbor, MI?]: ProQuest Information and Learning Company), 13, 1168–72; Ambrose, Letter 42: PL 16, 1123–29; Jerome, ‘‘Against Jovinian’’ I, 1: PL 23, 221. 17. Augustine, Holy Virginity, x45. 18. Pope John Paul II, Theology of Marriage and Celibacy: Catechesis on Marriage and Celibacy in Light of the Resurrection of the Body (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1986), 18, 29. 19. Against this reading, David Cloutier maintains, ‘‘The resulting severe discontinuity [in John Paul II’s view] between creation and eschatological fullness makes

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it essentially inconceivable that married life can embody the truly ‘lofty calling’ of the Christian.’’ David Cloutier, ‘‘Composing Love Songs for the Kingdom of God? Creation and Eschatology in Catholic Sexual Ethics,’’ Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 24, no. 2 (2004): 75–76. 20. Stephen G. Post, More Lasting Unions: Christianity, the Family and Society, ed. Don Browning and John Wall (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 191ff. 21. Ibid., 76. 22. One main question for scholars in recent years has been whether Augustine views sexual pleasure itself as a good or lumps it together with lust and wrongful sexual desire. This has most often happened in the context of questions about contraception and its permissibility. Most of the authors who write on this question do address it in terms of creation. Cf. D. F. Kelly, ‘‘Sexuality and Concupiscence in Augustine,’’ The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (Dallas, TX: Society of Christian Ethics, 1983), 81–116; H. S. Benjamins, ‘‘Keeping Marriage out of Paradise: The Creation of Man and Woman in Patristic Literature,’’ in The Creation of Man and Woman: Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives in Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Gerard Luttikhuizen (Leiden: Brill, 2000); and John Thomas Noonan, Contraception (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1986). 23. Benjamins, ‘‘Keeping Marriage out of Paradise,’’ especially 103–6. 24. Ramsey counteracts Augustine’s assumption about rationality and sex by suggesting that ‘‘it is precisely because sexual love is not directly subject to reason or will it is specially apt to serve the function for which God appointed it, namely, to be the field in which men and women may be personally present in their bodies and consequently accessible to one another from the heart.’’ Paul Ramsey, ‘‘Human Sexuality in the History of Redemption,’’ Journal of Religious Ethics 16, no. 1 (1988): 60; emphasis in original. Ramsey thus takes issue with Augustine’s presuppositions about body and soul in creation but does not see that his views of creation are tied to his views of the fall and redemption. See also Paul Ramsey, One Flesh: A Christian View of Sex within, outside, and before Marriage, ed. E. David Cook and Oliver O’Donovan (Nottingham, UK: Grove Books / Hassall and Lucking, 1975). 25. Ramsey, ‘‘Human Sexuality in the History of Redemption,’’ 62. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 70. 28. Ibid., 75; emphasis in original. 29. Ibid., 81. He takes his point here from Augustine’s treatise The Excellence of Widowhood, 28. 30. Ibid., 82; emphasis in original. 31. Livio Melina, Sharing in Christ’s Virtues: For a Renewal of Moral Theology in Light of Veritatis Splendor, trans. William E. May (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 51. 32. Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love: The Nuptial Mystery in the Light of the Orthodox Tradition, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel and Victoria Steadman (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 25.


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33. I recognize, however, that the distinctions between Eastern and Western Christians have often been overstated. A good account of how Eastern and Western theologies are actually quite like-minded is A. N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 34. Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love, 46– 47. 35. Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 219,’’ in Sermons (184–229z) on the Liturgical Seasons, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993). 36. J. D. Crichton, The Liturgy of Holy Week (Dublin: Veritas Publications / Fowler Wright Books, 1983), 82–83. 37. Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 216,’’ in Sermons (184–229z) on the Liturgical Seasons, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993), x8. 38. Aidan Kavanaugh, ‘‘On Liturgical Theology,’’ in Primary Sources of Liturgical Theology: A Reader, ed. Dwight Vogel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 95. 39. Edward Kilmartin, ‘‘Theology as Theology of the Liturgy,’’ in Primary Sources of Liturgical Theology: A Reader, ed. Dwight Vogel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 103. 40. Vigen Guroian, Ethics after Christendom: Toward an Ecclesial Christian Ethic (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 7. See also Vigen Guroian, Incarnate Love: Essays in Orthodox Ethics (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987). 41. For more on this point, see Bernd Wannenwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens, trans. Margaret Kohl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), especially part II. I discuss this book further in chapter 6. 42. David Matzko McCarthy, ‘‘Becoming One Flesh: Marriage, Remarriage and Sex,’’ in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, ed. Stanley M. Hauerwas and Samuel Wells (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 277. 43. Crichton, The Liturgy of Holy Week, 75. 44. An example is Elizabeth Clark. See her translation and interpretation of Augustine in Elizabeth A. Clark, Saint Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). 45. Gilbert Meilaender, The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), ix. 46. See Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002), VI and IX. This view of nature that involves male and female sexed bodies admittedly conflicts with the assumptions of other theologians, for example, Sarah Coakley, who as we have seen above follows Gregory of Nyssa in taking a different view on gender in which it becomes transformed, such that we do not even recognize it. 47. Ibid., VIII. 12, 25. 48. Ibid., IX. 18, 33. 49. Stephen J. Duffy, The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological Anthropology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 76–77. He notes as well that an

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emphasis on Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings on the matter of grace would not give the best picture of his understanding. 50. For example, Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘‘Sex, Shame and Rhetoric: En-gendering Early Christian Ethics,’’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59, no. 2 (1990): 221–45; David G. Hunter, ed., Marriage in the Early Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 22ff. 51. Duffy, The Dynamics of Grace, 92. Duffy notes, however, that Augustine does refer to sexual desire more frequently than other misplaced desires when he writes about concupiscence. 52. On this point, see, for example, Mary T. Clark, Augustine (New York: Continuum, 1994), especially chapter 7. Pelikan also gives a good overview in Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600), vol. 1, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). 53. Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 292,’’ x6; cited in Clark, Augustine, 80. 54. Augustine, The Excellence of Marriage in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 18, 21. 55. Augustine, ‘‘Exposition of Psalm 49’’ in Expositions of the Psalms 33–50, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Maria Boulding, O.S.B. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), x2. 56. Sarah Coakley, ‘‘The Eschatological Body: Gender, Transformation, and God,’’ in Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). 57. Eugene Rogers makes good use of this point about baptism and the people of Israel in his book. See Eugene F. Rogers Jr., Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God, ed. Gareth Jones and Lewis Ayres, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), especially chapters 1 and 2.

chapter 3 1. Most scholars attribute his numerous writings on creation in the period following his conversion up to 404 as part of his refutation of the Manichees. See J. C. Cooper, ‘‘Why Did Augustine Write Books XI–XIII of the Confessions?’’ Augustinian Studies 2 (1971): 37– 46. Interestingly, a similar charge about obsession with creation has been made of Karl Barth. See Eugene F. Rogers Jr., Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God, ed. Gareth Jones and Lewis Ayres, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 140ff. 2. The first of these is On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees, in which he attempted a figurative interpretation of Genesis, against the Manichees’ more literal (and erroneous) interpretation of certain key texts such as apparent anthropomorphic tendencies in describing God. His treatment of the doctrine includes a strong stance of creatio ex nihilo, and thereby a refutation of Manichee dualism in which there are two gods creating dark and light. Augustine’s second, brief, and unfinished treatise, The Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis, does not add a great deal, and


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Augustine abandoned it shortly after beginning. These two treatises, while helpful for discerning Augustine’s change in thought about creation over time, do not readily serve for my purposes here, and so I have chosen to look more closely at the third treatise. For an interesting and detailed account of Augustine’s working through creation in these treatises, see, for example, N. Joseph Torchia, O.P., Creatio Ex Nihilo and the Theology of St Augustine: The Anti-Manichaean Polemic and Beyond (New York: Peter Lang, 1999). 3. For information on the dating of The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, see Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘‘Heresy, Asceticism, Adam, and Eve: Interpretations of Genesis 1–3 in the Later Latin Fathers,’’ in Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 353–85. 4. There is some debate among scholars about the dating of this text. Some put it as early as 399, others as late as 404. One way of dating it has been by the mention of The Excellence of Marriage, though scholars who wish to date it earlier suggest that the inclusion of this reference came later still, when Augustine revised the text. Cf. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., ‘‘General Introduction,’’ in On Genesis, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002). 5. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis in On Genesis, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002), I. 1, 1. 6. Ibid., VI. 4. 7. H. S. Benjamins, ‘‘Keeping Marriage out of Paradise: The Creation of Man and Woman in Patristic Literature,’’ in The Creation of Man and Woman: Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives in Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Gerard Luttikhuizen (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 105. 8. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, VI. 3, 5. 9. Ibid., VI. 1, 2. 10. Ibid., VI. 6, 10ff. Augustine briefly ponders in what form these first humansin-their-causes were created. His analogy is seeds; seeds have a cause and in them can be seen the potential growth; he then turns aside the question of how the two creation stories coexist, explicitly preferring not to deal with the question of how, precisely, humans preexisted in their causes before God formed them to be Adam in Paradise and Eve from his rib. It is enough to know that God has ordered creation in a particular way so that later, Adam might be formed from mud. 11. For a detailed and complex treatment of Augustine’s views on creatio ex nihilo, see Joseph N. Torchia, O.P., Creatio Ex Nihilo and the Theology of St Augustine: The Anti-Manichaean Polemic and Beyond, (New York: Peter Lang, 1999). 12. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, VI. 8, 13. 13. Augustine expressly denies that bodies could have been formed later and that only souls were formed in the first six days. Cf. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, VI. 7, 12. 14. See Kari Elizabeth Børresen, Subordination and Equivalence: The Nature and Role of Woman in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1968), especially 339– 40. Kim Power gives a sympathetic reading to Augustine and his context, while still critiquing his legacy; Kim Power, Veiled Desire:

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Augustine’s Writing on Women (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1995). Stronger views include Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Vintage Books,1988); Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983). A detailed account of feminists’ thoughts about Augustine may be found in E. Ann Matter, ‘‘Christ, God and Women,’’ in Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honor of Gerald Bonner, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (London: Routledge, 2000). 15. Augustine, The Excellence of Marriage, in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 1, 1. 16. Donald X. Burt, Friendship and Society: An Introduction to Augustine’s Practical Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 87. Burt devotes two chapters of his book on friendship and Augustine to marriage and family and the ways in which he sees that Augustine supports marriage as a friendship between men and women, against claims that Augustine supports gender inequalities, subordination of women to men, and sees that the sexual drive destroys any sense of friendship as a partnership. 17. He discusses these in Augustine, The Excellence of Marriage, 4, 4–6, 6. 18. Ibid., 18, 21. 19. Ibid. 20. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, IX. 5. 9. Curiously, his argument that woman was made, of necessity, for procreation rather than companionship does not parallel his argument against the prospect of work in Eden. In the case of work, Augustine says that woman was not created to help because in the Garden of Eden there was no need of work. One might expect that his argument in relation to companionship would be similar, as Augustine considers what was necessary in the Garden, for instance, that there was no need of companionship either because God was the true companion. What he says, however, is, ‘‘How much more agreeably, after all, for conviviality and conversation would two male friends live together on equal terms than man and wife?’’ 21. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, IX. 5, 9. 22. However, Elizabeth Clark suggests that Augustine does not write The Excellence of Marriage or Holy Virginity from a reproductive point of view. See Elizabeth A. Clark, Saint Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). 23. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, VI. 8, 13. 24. Ibid. 25. Augustine puts forth this point in The City of God, as well. He writes, ‘‘But we, for our part, have no manner of doubt that to increase and multiply and replenish the earth in virtue of the blessing of God, is a gift of marriage as God instituted it from the beginning before man sinned, when He created them male and female—in other words, two sexes manifestly distinct. And it was this work of God on which His blessing was pronounced.’’ Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods, D.D. (New York: Modern Library, 1993), XIV. 22. 26. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, IX. 3, 5.


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27. Ibid., IX. 3, 6. 28. An interesting question that could be addressed further, for example, is whether male-female relationships necessitate marriage, especially in the world after Christ. Marriage is not necessary for Augustine, especially in a post-Christ world, as I develop further later. 29. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, IX. 3, 6. 30. Ibid. 31. It is important, when reading Augustine, to pay attention to the distinctions between earlier and later literature. The points Augustine makes are not usually unconnected, however; the way Augustine wrote, and especially the way in which he was able to offer revisions to his earlier works in his later career show developments but not usually vast disagreements between the early and late Augustine. Eugene TeSelle calls this the ‘‘cinematic approach’’ to viewing Augustine. See Eugene TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian (New York: Herder and Herder), 20. 32. Augustine, The City of God, XII. 21. 33. Ibid., XII. 27. 34. Torchia, Creatio Ex Nihilo and the Theology of St Augustine, 109–10. 35. For a treatment of Augustine’s apparent conundrum about how a human will could be created good and yet turn away from God, see Robert F. Brown, ‘‘The First Evil Will Must Be Incomprehensible: A Critique of Augustine,’’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 46, no. 3 (1978): 315–29. For one of many responses to Brown (and others offering similar assessments as Brown), see T. D. J. Chappell, ‘‘Explaining the Inexplicable: Augustine on the Fall,’’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62 no. 3 (1994): 869–84. For a detailed and constructive assessment of Augustine’s many uses of ‘‘will’’ in relation to the fall, see Ann Pang-White, ‘‘The Fall of Humanity: Weakness of the Will and Moral Responsibility in the Later Augustine,’’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology 9 (2000): 51–67. James Wetzel provides a comprehensive account of virtue with respect to will in Augustine and the Limits of Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), especially in chapters 3 and 4. 36. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, XI. 32, 42. See also Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence, in Saint Augustin’s Anti-Pelagian Works, trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, revised trans. Benjamin Warfield (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999 ), II. 11, 11. Here he writes, ‘‘If adultery cannot be excused because of inability to be celibate, still less is it excused for the purpose of having children!’’ 37. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, IX. 3, 6. 38. Augustine, The City of God, XII. 27. 39. Darby Kathleen Ray, Deceiving the Devil: Atonement, Abuse and Ransom (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1998), especially chapter 1. Cf. Marjorie ProcterSmith, ‘‘The Whole Loaf: Holy Communion and Survival,’’ in Violence against Women and Children, ed. Carol J. Adams and Marie M. Fortune (New York: Continuum, 1995), 464–78; Valerie Saiving, ‘‘The Human Situation: A Feminine View,’’ in Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, ed. Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), 25– 42.

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40. Børresen, Subordination and Equivalence, 54. 41. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, XI. 1, 3. 42. Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence, I. 5, 4. 43. Ibid., I. 7, 6. 44. Augustine, Continence,in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 8, 19. 45. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, XI. 5, 7. 46. Augustine, Holy Virginity,in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 8, 21. 47. Despite the stark depictions Augustine offers for death and procreation because of death, the fall is not quite the defining moment for Augustine as it has been in more recent theologies focusing on the total depravity of humankind (for instance). The occasion of our sin in Adam is one of Augustine’s great concerns, but the fall is not the sum total. For Augustine, it is a matter of great arrogance in fact, to believe that with Adam and Eve’s sin, the whole world came crashing down, and all creation with it. Thus, Augustine is entirely willing to speculate about other created beings that experience a separate fall from God. We might note, for example, the beginning of Augustine’s two cities occurred before humans lived in the garden; it began when certain angels turned away from God. See Augustine, The City of God, XI. 9–13. 48. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, III. 21, 33. 49. Ibid. 50. For comparison, see Augustine, The Excellence of Marriage, 2, 2. Concerning procreation, we can note something of a contrast here between the later writing of The Literal Interpretation of Genesis and that of the earlier The Excellence of Marriage because in the treatise on marriage, Augustine is less definitively certain about procreation. He knows that ‘‘Be fruitful and multiply’’ implies generation, but he says that sexual union is possible only for mortal bodies. In his later works, including The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, as well as The City of God, he is much more certain that men and women could have physically generated other human beings in the Garden, but this sex would have exhibited a body controlled by reason rather than chaotic genitals unable to respond to human will, despite the will’s best intentions. 51. Augustine, The City of God, XI. 18. 52. Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, in Four Anti-Pelagian Writings, trans. John A. Mourant and William J. Collinge, introduction and notes by William J. Collinge (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992). 53. Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence, I. 7, 6. 54. Ibid., II. 26, 13. 55. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, XI. 37, 50. 56. Ibid., IX. 9, 14. 57. He writes, ‘‘So then, why did they not in fact couple until they had departed from Paradise? The quick answer can be given: because no sooner was the woman made than before they came together the transgression occurred, which earned their sentence of death and their departure from that place of felicity.’’ Ibid., IX. 4, 8.


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58. Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence, II. 24, 11. 59. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 9, 9. 60. The first people living in the garden were already created in a state of uncertainty, for they could not be certain that they would not sin before achieving eternal life. This historical (and therefore literal reading) turns out to be a prophetic statement for Augustine as well, because he sees that this is somewhat like the uncertainty that the ‘‘blessed’’ people have now, because they do not know whether or not they shall receive blessedness. The fall of the angels had already had an effect on creation, even before Adam and Eve arrived in Paradise. See Augustine, The City of God, XI. 12. 61. Note that for Augustine, celibacy is not a special vowed state of life; instead, virginity, which is not a matter of physical status, is the vowed state of life. One is not born a consecrated virgin but is made one in the church, as he says in Holy Virginity 10, 10–11, 11; it is consecrated virginity to which he refers when he compares it to marriage. 62. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 6, 6–7, 7; this translation places emphasis on scriptural references. 63. Ibid., 3, 3. 64. Ibid., 20, 20; this translation places emphasis on scriptural references. 65. Augustine, The Excellence of Marriage, 24, 32. Cf. The Excellence of Marriage, 15: ‘‘In the city of our God, however, where marriage is sealed by the first act of intercourse between the two persons, once marriage has been entered into it cannot be dissolved by any means except the death of one of them. The marriage bond remains, even if because of evident infertility no children result, despite the fact that this was the reason for entering into the marriage.’’ 66. Ibid., 18, 21. 67. Augustine, Adulterous Marriages, in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 4, 4. 68. Augustine, The Excellence of Marriage, 23, 29. 69. Ibid., 26, 34. 70. Ibid., 3, 3. 71. Augustine, Retractions, trans. Mary Inez Bogan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1960), II. 57, 83. He says similarly in Adulterous Marriages: ‘‘I am not unaware that the whole question of marriage is still very unclear and complex’’ in connection with understanding what marriage means in relation to virginity. Augustine, Adulterous Marriages, I. 25, 32. 72. For a more developed interpretation of Augustine on the resurrection and what it means for gendered bodies and contemporary questions about gender, see Beth Felker-Jones, Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 73. Augustine, The City of God, XXII. 17. 74. Ibid., XXII. 18. 75. Ibid., XXII. 17. 76. Elizabeth Clark is one of several scholars, however, who see that John Chrysostom’s views of marriage and virginity are just as problematic, if not more so,

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than Augustine’s views. See especially Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 77. Catherine P. Roth, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in On Marriage and Family Life (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 11. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid., 15. 80. John Chrysostom, On Virginity in On Virginity—Against Remarriage, trans. Sally Rieger Shore (New York: Edwin Mellon Press, 1983), XIV. 5. 81. See Elizabeth Clark, ‘‘Introduction’’ in Chrysostom, On Virginity, xv. 82. John Chrysostom, On Virginity, XLVI. 5. 83. John Chrysostom, On Virginity, LXIII. 1. 84. See especially chapter 9, ‘‘The Eschatological Body: Gender, Transformation and God,’’ in Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Chapter 7, ‘‘ ‘Persons’ in the ‘Social’ Doctrine of the Trinity: Current Analytic Discussion and ‘Cappadocian’ Theology’’ is also helpful for seeing how Coakley understands gender. 85. See chapter 4, ‘‘The Displaced Body of Jesus Christ,’’ in Graham Ward, Cities of God (London: Routledge, 2000).

chapter 4 1. The emphasis on marriage over virginity in scholarship is fairly well entrenched; one might compare the number of books that come up in a library search on marriage (7,875) versus one on singleness (9) or celibacy (184) (Duke University library catalogue, February 7, 2005). In his book about promoting Christian marriage, Stephen Post laments the lack of writing on singleness and admits that any writing on Christian marriage ‘‘is somewhat distorted’’ without consideration of singleness. See Stephen G. Post, More Lasting Unions: Christianity, the Family and Society, ed. Don Browning and John Wall, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 36. 2. So, of course, part of the current debate about gay marriage rests exactly in what the term ‘‘marriage’’ can be used to describe. 3. In one episode of Sex and the City, for example, the main character, Carrie Bradshaw, finds that her $485.00 shoes have gone missing from a friend’s apartment after a baby shower. The hostess offers to replace the shoes until she discovers how much they cost, and she excoriates Bradshaw for spending so much on shoes, when the money could be used on diapers and food, as any real adult would know. Bradshaw reflects on the fact that she has given many wedding shower and baby gifts to the hostess that total much more than the shoes cost; why can’t she, too, be given gifts as she needs and wants? Bradshaw ends up solving the problem on her terms by announcing that, as a single person, she is getting married to herself and, moreover, has registered at a shoe store. The hostess of the baby shower ultimately buys the shoes as a ‘‘wedding gift’’ for Bradshaw’s marriage to the single life. As a whole, this show and fiction like Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary, in which ‘‘singletons’’ are


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put forth as free-loving sex kittens, raise questions about whether or not singles function as autonomous, unrelated individuals with respect to marriage, which appears as the crowning glory. See Jenny Bicks, ‘‘A Woman’s Right to Shoes,’’ in Sex and the City, DVD, directed by Tim Van Patten (New York City: HBO, 2003). 4. Such texts appear to come from the more evangelical voices in the church, perhaps because marriage and family have taken on more importance among evangelicals (in such prominent groups as Focus on the Family and Promise Keepers), which opens a greater gap between those who are single and those who are married. See Albert Y. Hsu, Singles at the Crossroads: A Fresh Perspective on Christian Singleness (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997); Ada Lum, Single and Human (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1976); Britton Wood, Single Adults Want to Be the Church Too (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1977). 5. For a historical account of celibacy and chastity, see Will Deming, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004). See also Elizabeth Abbott, A History of Celibacy: From Athena to Elizabeth I, Leonardo da Vinci, Florence Nightingale, Gandhi, and Cher (New York: Scribner, 2000). 6. For example, Leviticus 21:14. 7. Cited in Jerome, ‘‘Adversus Jovinianum’’ in Patrologia Latina (The full text database [Ann Arbor, MI?]: ProQuest Information and Learning Company), 23, 282. 8. For a well-researched account of patristic use of scripture as rhetoric for celibacy and other forms of asceticism by several early church fathers, see Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 9. See, for instance, Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, in Ascetical Works, trans. Virginia Woods Callaban (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1967). 10. For Jovinian, the determining factor was baptism, and not grace or faith separately conceived from baptism. An argument for this view of Jovinian comes from Francesco Valli, Gioviniano: Esame Delle Fonti E Dei Frammenti (Urbino: Universita di Urbino, 1953). 11. Post, More Lasting Unions, especially 36–38; John Witte Jr., From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition, ed. Don Browning and Ian S. Evison (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), especially chapter 2; R.V. Young, ‘‘The Reformations of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’’ in Christian Marriage: A Historical Study / Sponsored by the Wethersfield Institute, ed. Glenn W. Olsen (New York: Crossroad, 2001). 12. Wilhelm Haller claims this version in Jovinian, Iovinianus: Die Fragmente seiner Schriften, die Quellen zu seiner Geschichte, sein Leben und seine Lehre: Zu¨ utert und im zusammenhange dargestellt von Wilhelm Haller, trans. sammengestellt, Erla Wilhelm Haller (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1897). For an analysis of how both Catholic and Protestant scholars have treated Jovinian, see also David Hunter, ‘‘Resistance to the Virginal Ideal in Late-Fourth-Century Rome: The Case of Jovinian,’’ Theological Studies 48 (1987):45–64.

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13. Nowhere was this more evident than the recent sex abuse scandals. For instance, the National Catholic Reporter stated: ‘‘A lay review panel in the Seattle archdiocese said the church’s celibacy requirement for priests helped ‘set the stage for the deviant behavior’ of clergy sexual abuse. The 10-member Case Review Board said mandatory celibacy was a ‘contributing factor’ to the sexual abuse scandal by blurring distinctions between ‘deviant or exploitative behavior and normal but unacceptable behavior.’ ’’ Dennis Coday, ‘‘Panel Links Celibacy and Abuse,’’ National Catholic Reporter, October 29, 2004. 14. More often than not, consideration of celibacy comes in the form of papal documents such as Pope Paul VI, Sacerdotis Caelibatus: Encyclical of Pope Paul VI on the Celibacy of the Priest (Vatican, 1967), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/ encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_24061967_sacerdotalis_en.html (Accessed April 30, 2006). Sometimes this discussion comes in the form of brief chapters in books. See, for example, chapter 6 in Lisa Sowle Cahill, Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 15. See, for instance, Catholic Theological Society of America, Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought (New York: Paulist Press, 1977). This work provides a report on human sexuality for Christians, both historically and as practiced in the contemporary era. Celibacy is not completely downgraded in this report but still is given only 3 pages out of a total of 239. The report caused much consternation in the magisterium and is still mentioned unfavorably in documents today, because of its suggestions about masturbation and cohabitation. See, for example, Matthew Lamb, ‘‘Theological Malpractice: The Roots of Scandal,’’ National Review Online, October 3, 2002, http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-lamb100302.asp (Accessed January 21, 2005). 16. There are moral theologians, for example, who suggest that given the current state of affairs regarding attitudes toward sex and marriage, there should be an alternate Christian state of life in which sex is permissible before marriage. This perspective represents quite a shift from the view that all sex is marital. See, for example, Adrian Thatcher, Living Together and Christian Ethics, vol. 21 of New Studies in Christian Ethics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 17. This is noted especially in chapters 1 and 2 of Katherine Anderson, Don Browning, and Brian Boyer, eds., Marriage: Just a Piece of Paper? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002). 18. Augustine seems to envision a continuum between marriage and virginity, with virginity the state capable of producing the most joy in God, but with all states as providing a way toward holiness and life in Christ. 19. In many of Augustine’s treatises on single states of life, he most often appears to be addressing women. This is partly due to a large rise in ascetic practice among women. However, his characterization of single states raises some questions about his understanding of gender, some of which are discussed in Kari Elizabeth Børresen, Subordination and Equivalence: The Nature and Role of Woman in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1968). At the same time, while treatises such as Holy Virginity and The Excellence of Widowhood are


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directed toward women in particular, they are also full of references to the whole church and, at times, to men only. For example, Augustine speaks of eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven in Holy Virginity as being men who ‘‘refrain from taking a wife.’’ Augustine, Holy Virginity, in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 23, 23. I have chosen not to focus too much on the gender issues raised here because Augustine is still clear that a life of virginity is for both men and women. In fact, as Elizabeth Clark suggests, the great rise of ascetic practice for women resulted in rhetorical use of shame to encourage men to be likewise continent or celibate. See Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘‘Sex, Shame and Rhetoric: En-gendering Early Christian Ethics,’’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59, no. 2 (1991): 221– 45. 20. John Chrysostom, On Virginity in On Virginity—Against Remarriage, trans. Sally Rieger Shore (New York: Edwin Mellon Press, 1983), XIV. 5. 21. Ibid., XV. 22. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, in On Genesis ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002), IX. 7, 12; this translation places emphasis on scriptural references. 23. Augustine makes a curious distinction between physical and spiritual virginity in Holy Virginity. I will address this later in the section on redemption. 24. Augustine, The Excellence of Marriage, in Marriage and Virginity ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 2, 2. 25. A ‘‘mystical’’ interpretation of the command suggests that the earth would be filled with the fruits of ‘‘abundance and perfection of life and power’’ as ‘‘spiritual’’ goods rather than physical goods. See ibid. 26. Ibid., 2, 3. 27. Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods, D.D. (New York: Modern Library, 1993), XIV. 23. 28. Augustine, On Genesis against the Manichees, in On Genesis, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002), II. 13, 19; this translation places emphasis on scriptural references. 29. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, IX. 3, 6. 30. He writes, for example, ‘‘Virginal integrity, on the other hand, and the freedom from all sexual intimacy that comes with the devout practice of celibacy, belongs with the angels, and in corruptible flesh it is a foretaste of eternal incorruptibility.’’ Augustine, Holy Virginity, 12, 13. 31. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, IX. 7, 12. 32. Augustine, Continence, in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 8, 21. 33. Henri de Lubac, S.J., Augustinianism and Modern Theology introduction by Louis Dupre´, trans. Lancelot Sheppard (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 99. 34. Augustine, The City of God, XIV. 21. 35. In Holy Virginity, Augustine thus writes, ‘‘Consider the value of all these things, and put them on the scales of love, and give to him [Christ] in return whatever love you would have had to spend in marriage.’’ Augustine, Holy Virginity, 55, 55.

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36. She writes: ‘‘Concupiscence is the result of original sin: it has no place in the first sin. Temptation of a sexual order is incompatible with the perfection of the state of innocence.’’ Børresen, Subordination and Equivalence, 55. 37. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, XI. 31, 41. 38. This is a point that Edmund Hill remarks on similarly. See footnote 45 of his commentary and translation of Augustine’s interpretation of the Genesis texts in ibid. 39. Ibid., XI. 31, 41. 40. Augustine, The City of God, XIV. 13. 41. Cf. ibid, XIV. 16ff. 42. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 37, 38. 43. David Hunter observes in his notes on the text that Augustine himself divides his treatise in two parts. In 1.1, Augustine writes, ‘‘So not only must we preach virginity, for it to be loved; but we must also instruct it, so that it will not become puffed up with pride.’’ See the translator’s note 3 in Holy Virginity, in Marriage and Virginity. Cf. P.G. Walsh, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in De Bono Coniugali / De Sancta Virginitate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001). Walsh provides a very good description of some of the more subtle nuances of the text. 44. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 45, 46; this translation places emphasis on scriptural references. 45. Augustine, The Excellence of Widowhood, in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 7, 10. 46. Ibid. 47. Kari Elisabeth Børresen sees in this same text that polygamy was used to safeguard women’s subordination, before Christ. The possibility for equality, or ‘‘equivalence,’’ to use Børresen’s word, is restored after Christ, though women still see subordination in New Testament marriages, but of a different kind. ‘‘In the New Testament, the unity of the first couple is re-established in all its purity by the abolition of polygamy. On the other hand, the subordinate state of woman, which made polygamy possible according to the customs of the Old Testament, belongs to the ideal marriage in the state of innocence and remains valid. When it is not blemished by domination, the special punishment for sin inflicted on woman, the peace of a Christian family has a harmonious order. . . . Side by side with the subordination of woman in marriage, the New Testament, by demanding one wife for one husband, introduces their equivalence.’’ Børresen, Subordination and Equivalence, 97. 48. Augustine, The City of God, XVI. 36. 49. Augustine, The Excellence of Widowhood, 7, 10. 50. Ibid., 6, 8. 51. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 9, 9. 52. Augustine, The Excellence of Widowhood, 7. 53. Ibid. 54. Chrysostom, On Virginity, XVII. 3. 55. Augustine, The City of God, XV. 2. Augustine also takes care to note that Sarah’s chastity was preserved in Egypt, so that both remained upholders of God’s law, foreshadowing Israel’s obedience and faithfulness to God. Cf. XVI. 19.


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56. Ibid., XV. 3. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., XVI. 26. 59. Chrysostom, On Virginity, LXXXIII. 1. 60. Augustine, The City of God, XVII. 2. 61. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 45, 46. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 27, 27–28, 28. 64. Ibid., 23, 23; this translation places emphasis on scriptural references. 65. Ibid., 26, 26. Cf. 28, 28. 66. Ibid., 24, 24. 67. Augustine, The City of God, XXII. 18. 68. Augustine, 27, 27. 69. Ibid.; this translation places emphasis on scriptural references.; translator has suggested some possible biblical passages that might fit the text here. 70. Ibid., 55, 56. 71. Ibid., 35, 35. 72. Ibid., 34, 34. 73. Augustine, The City of God, I. 16. 74. Ibid., XXII. 18. 75. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 24, 24. 76. Ibid., 2, 2. 77. Ibid., 9, 9. 78. At the same time, Augustine does not focus too greatly on Mary as virgin; she is not mentioned in as much depth as Christ in any of his works on marriage and virginity. Christ’s virginity takes up far more consideration. 79. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 6, 6. 80. Ibid., 5, 5. 81. Ibid. 82. Augustine, ‘‘Exposition of Psalm 44,’’ in Exposition of the Psalms 33–50, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Maria Boulding, O.S.B. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), x3. 83. Chrysostom, On Virginity, XXX. 2. 84. Ibid., XL. 85. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 27, 27. 86. Ibid., 28, 28. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid., 11, 11. 89. Ibid., 3, 3. 90. Ibid., 7, 7; this translation places emphasis on scriptural references. 91. Ibid., 5, 5. 92. Ibid., 6, 6. See also Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 188,’’ in Sermons (184–229z) on the Liturgical Seasons, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P., (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993).

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93. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 6, 6. 94. David Hunter, Introduction to The Excellence of Widowhood,in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 111. 95. Augustine, The Excellence of Widowhood, 1, 1. 96. Ibid., 2, 3. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid., 5, 7. In Augustine’s day, widows sometimes made vows of lifelong celibacy once they found themselves alone. Such was the case with Juliana, the widow to whom he writes this particular treatise. Widows who broke this vow of celibacy could rightly be considered adulterers against Christ. See Augustine, The Excellence of Widowhood, 11, 14. Some scholars have also seen that it was not advantageous for women to remarry (or marry, for that matter), so that the assumption is that women fare better in unmarried states of life. See, for example, Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992). 99. Augustine, The Excellence of Widowhood, 5, 7. Augustine’s view here stands by contrast to Jerome’s, in which second marriages are only slightly better than prostitution. See Jerome, ‘‘Adversus Jovinianum,’’ I. 27. 100. Augustine, The Excellence of Widowhood, 14, 18. 101. Ibid., 13, 16. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid., 14, 17. 104. Ibid., 15, 19. 105. Ibid., 17, 21. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid., 18, 22. 108. Ibid., 20, 26. 109. For more on Augustine and the Augustinian rule, see Louis Bouyer, The Spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers (New York: Desclee Company, 1963), 495; Peter Robert Lamont Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, new edition with an epilogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). For a supportive view of Augustine and monastic leadership, see George Lawless’s comprehensive account in Augustine of Hippo and His Monastic Rule (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). 110. ‘‘Introduction to The Work of Monks,’’ in Treatises on Various Subjects, ed. Roy J. Deferrari (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952). 111. Augustine, The Work of Monks, in Treatises on Various Subjects, ed. Roy J. Deferrari (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952), I. 2. 112. For, example, ibid., VII. 8. 113. Ibid., XXV. 32. 114. Ibid. 115. Ibid.


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116. Willemien Otten, ‘‘Augustine on Marriage, Monasticism, and the Community of the Church,’’ Theological Studies 59 (1998): 403. See also Michael Hanby, Augustine and Modernity (London: New York: Routledge, 2003), 119ff. 117. As we saw in the previous chapter, some authors holding this view are H. S. Benjamins, ‘‘Keeping Marriage out of Paradise: The Creation of Man and Woman in Patristic Literature,’’ in The Creation of Man and Woman: Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives in Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Gerard Luttikhuizen (Leiden: Brill, 2000); D. F. Kelly, ‘‘Sexuality and Concupiscence in Augustine,’’ The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, 81–116 (Dallas, TX: Society of Christian Ethics, 1983). 118. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 6, 6.

chapter 5 1. Eph. 1:5, NRSV. 2. Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 442. 3. Alexander Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 10–11. 4. Ibid., especially chapter 4. 5. Many of Augustine’s sermons, for example, make reference to the need to curb sexual appetite (See sermons 205–210, 229). 6. Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 228,’’ in Sermons (184–229z) on the Liturgical Seasons, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993), x1. 7. Ibid., x2. 8. Augustine, ‘‘Exposition of Psalm 44,’’ in Exposition of the Psalms 33–50, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Marcia Boulding, O.S.B. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), x11. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., x12. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., x23. 14. Ibid. 15. Among other texts, they struggled with why, for instance, Jesus would both be present at the wedding at Cana (John 2:1–11) and suggest to his disciples that divorce was acceptable only when a spouse had committed adultery (Matt. 19:3–9), but also proclaim, ‘‘One’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me’’ (Matt. 10:36–38). For other scriptural references, see Bernard McGinn, ‘‘Introduction: John’s Apocalypse and the Apocalyptic Mentality,’’ in The

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Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Bernard McGinn and Richard K. Emmerson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). 16. David Hunter, ‘‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church: Reading Psalm 45 in Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine,’’ Church History 69, no. 2 (2000): 283. Hunter goes on to suggest that Augustine thereby introduces ‘‘a decidedly paternal and patriarchal dimension into his interpretation of the psalm’’ (301) because he emphasizes ecclesial authority over ascetic effort as the definition of the true Church. I claim that Augustine does indeed put forth ecclesial authority over ascetic effort, but that this need not be construed as necessarily or inherently patriarchal. In fact, I think that Augustine’s move here is beneficial on a number of counts. Were the church to have been defined by a sort of free asceticism, I think we would definitely have gone down the road that I sarcastically allude to in this chapter’s introduction. By not taking an ultra-ascetic road, however, Augustine leads us toward a more broad vision of what it means to live the Christian life, one that is capable of embracing numerous forms of gender roles. Ecclesial authority takes many forms, only one of which is a church hierarchy that ordains and includes only men. We must not concentrate solely on patriarchal concerns about the church’s orders to the detriment of recognizing how Augustine sees ecclesial authority as also theological. The church is the Body of Christ, the bride, God’s household, and God’s kingdom, among other images, and these, too, have a part in showing ecclesial authority. 17. This psalm juxtaposes images of God as king victorious in battle alongside a virgin bride entering the chambers of this king, ‘‘with joy and gladness’’ (v. 15). 18. Augustine, ‘‘Exposition of Psalm 44’’, x1. 19. There is therefore nothing like our contemporary separation between liturgy and ethics for Augustine. Both flow in and through each other in the person who dares to call himself or herself a Christian. 20. Augustine, ‘‘Exposition of Psalm 44,’’ x3. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., x2. 23. Herbert McCabe, The People of God: The Fullness of Life in the Church (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), 172. 24. Augustine does not have the same concept of sacrament and sacramentality that is developed in later theology, but nonetheless, his views of grace and sacrament still bear discussion. 25. Gerald Bonner provides a fine translation of this poem. Gerald Bonner, St Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1986), 256. 26. Augustine, ‘‘From Other Times: An Instruction on the Eucharist,’’ Orate Fratres: A Review Devoted to the Liturgical Apostolate 24, no. 7 (June 1950): 309. 27. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana in Patrologia Latina: The full text database ([Ann Arbor, MI?]: ProQuest Information and Learning Company), 34: 70–71, section 9.13; translation mine. For additional commentary on Augustine and sacraments, see also C. W. Dugmore, ‘‘Sacrament and Sacrifice in the Early Fathers,’’ Journal of


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Ecclesiastical History 2, no. 1 (1951): 24–37; Kenneth F. Smits, ‘‘Augustine and Liturgical Pluriformity,’’ Worship 44 (1970): 386–98. 28. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), I. vi, 10. 29. Ibid., I. iv, 4. 30. Ibid., I. ii, 2. 31. Ibid., I. i, 1. 32. Ibid., XIII. xxxviii, 53. 33. In the Confessions, Augustine’s view of physical signs is that they have multiple meanings through which the rational mind can have greater and greater knowledge of God. 34. Dwelling thus takes on many meanings for Augustine. The soul may dwell in God, and God may dwell in the soul. Dwelling becomes even more significant, however, at the end of the Confessions, when Augustine speaks of the creation of heaven and earth, which are the great dwellings on which the whole of humankind lives, and which also resides and rests in God. The church, too, becomes a dwelling for humans and also rests in God. Books XII and XIII especially treat of this. 35. Augustine, Confessions, XIII. xii, 13. 36. Ibid., XIII. xxii, 32. Here, he does mean both men and women. Further down, he also says that men and women are equal in terms of rational mind and discernment (XIII. xxxii, 47). For Augustine here, the difference between men and women is not found in terms of intellect or exercising of judgment; it is found in terms of authority and therefore order. 37. Ibid., XIII. xxiii, 34. 38. Ibid. The ‘‘living soul’’ to which Augustine refers here is all the faithful members of the church whose minds are renewed in Christ, whose bodies are disciplined, and who are blessed by the sacraments and other physical, visible signs of the Word. Cf. XIII. xxxiv, 49, where Augustine also refers to ‘‘the living soul.’’ 39. Ibid., XIII. xxiv, 37. 40. Augustine cites this scripture in his description of the human end in God, Ibid., XIII. xiii, 14. 41. Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 229e,’’ in Sermons (184–229z) on the Liturgical Seasons, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993), x4. 42. Pope Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus: Encyclical of Pope Paul VI on the Celibacy of the Priest, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/ hf_p-vi_enc_24061967_sacerdotalis_en.html, x20 (Accessed April 30, 2006). 43. Ibid., x31. 44. Ibid., x20. 45. Cited in Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love: The Nuptial Mystery in the Light of the Orthodox Tradition, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel and Victoria Steadman (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 118.

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46. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis III. 10. 68, in Alexandrian Christianity, trans. E. L. Oulton (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954); cited in Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love, 118. 47. Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love, 151. 48. Ibid., 151–52. 49. David Cloutier, ‘‘Composing Love Songs for the Kingdom of God? Creation and Eschatology in Catholic Sexual Ethics,’’ Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 24, no. 2 (2004): 72. Cloutier cites Optatum totius, x16, here. 50. Ibid. 51. Pope John Paul II, On the Family: Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to the Episcopate to the Clergy and to the Faithful of the Whole Catholic Church Regarding the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1982), x3. 52. Ibid., II. x16. 53. Ibid., x86. 54. Eugene F. Rogers Jr., Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 72–73. 55. Cited in ibid., 81. 56. Ephesians 2:19, NRSV. 57. 1 Timothy 3:15, NRSV. 58. This is, of course, precisely the point at which I take great exception to Don Browning’s characterization of the family as a ‘‘stable–equal regard’’ enterprise. In Browning’s work it becomes clear that the family consists of a mother, a father, and children, working together to attain greater equality for women, greater peace and harmony between family members, lower divorce rates, and a subsequent lowering of distress for children whose families have been uprooted. While I am in favor of such results, I think this is the wrong way to go about bringing them to fruition, if such a thing is even possible. He largely ignores the vast array and forms that households have taken and continue to take. While I do not think that all the possible forms of households that exist lead us to our true end in God, I am quite sure that advocating only one household form that looks curiously like the so-called typical Western (American) family is theologically problematic. 59. Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 184’’, in Sermons (184–229z) on the Liturgical Seasons, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993), x3. 60. Pope John Paul II, ‘‘Everyone Has His Own Gift from God, Suited to His Vocation’’ in The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), 293. 61. See, for example, the pope’s discussion on choosing marriage or virginity in Pope John Paul II, ‘‘ ‘The Unmarried Person Is Anxious to Please the Lord’ ’’ in The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997). 62. Augustine, Holy Virginity in Marriage and Virginity, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Ray Kearney (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 45, 46.


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chapter 6 1. Mark 2:22, NRSV. 2. James A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 10. 3. Pope Leo XIII, Arcanum: Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Christian Marriage. Vatican Library, 1880. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/ documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_10021880_arcanum_en.html (Accessed August 30, 2004). 4. Ibid. 5. On this point, see especially William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination (London: T&T Clark, 2002), chap. 1, ‘‘The Myth of the State as Savior.’’ 6. Stanley Hauerwas, ‘‘A Christian Critique of Christian America,’’ in The Hauerwas Reader: Stanley Hauerwas, ed. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 479, emphasis added. See also John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984). 7. William T. Cavanaugh, ‘‘Discerning: Politics and Reconciliation,’’ in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, ed. Samuel Wells and Stanley Hauerwas (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 204. 8. Bernd Wannenwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens, trans. Margaret Kohl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 159. 9. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 388. 10. Ibid., 403. 11. For instance, ekklesia derives from the name for Greek city-state assemblies. 12. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 403. 13. Ibid. 14. Wannenwetsch, Political Worship, 108. 15. Wannenwetsch uses Hannah Arendt’s work in his discussion on this point, because she sees that society (which is distinct from the state) is the outgrowth of the Christian oikos, the family of God. But Wannenwetsch cautions against this view of history because the church then loses the means to critique the world. Ibid., 208ff. See further Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). 16. Wannenwetsch, Political Worship, 275. 17. There have been many more authors who have written about liturgy as ethics, with varying degrees of success; I have here put forth ‘‘liturgy as ethics’’ as the best description for seeing a ‘‘relationship’’ between the two. While there is not space to go into detail here, for a good summary of approaches, see L. Edward Phillips, ‘‘Liturgy and Ethics,’’ in Liturgy in Dialogue: Essays in Memory of Ronald Jasper, ed. Paul F. Bradshaw and Bryan D. Spinks (London: SPCK, 1993). See further Mark Allman, ‘‘Eucharist, Ritual and Narrative: Formation of Individual and Communal Moral Character,’’ Journal of Ritual Studies 14, no. 1 (2000): 60–68; James L. Empereur and Christopher G. Kiesling, The Liturgy That Does Justice, vol. 33, Theology and Life (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990); Vigen Guroian, ‘‘Liturgy and the Lost

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Eschatological Vision of Christian Ethics’’ (paper presented at the Society of Christian Ethics, Washington, DC, 2000); Mary E. Stamps, ed., To Do Justice and Right upon the Earth: Papers from the Virgil Michel Symposium on Liturgy and Social Justice (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993); Gordon Lathrop, ‘‘ ‘O Taste and See’: The Geography of Liturgical Ethics,’’ in Liturgy and the Moral Self, ed. E. Byron Anderson and Bruce T. Morrill, S.J. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998); Gilbert Ostdiek, ‘‘Liturgy and Justice: The Legacy That Awaits Us,’’ in Liturgy and Justice: To Worship God in Spirit and Truth, ed. Anne Y. Koester (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002); Paul Ramsey, ‘‘Liturgy and Ethics,’’ Journal of Religious Ethics 7 (1979): 139–71; Don Saliers, ‘‘Liturgy and Ethics: Some New Beginnings,’’ Journal of Religious Ethics 7 (1979): 173–89; Geoffrey Wainwright, ‘‘Eucharist and/as Ethics,’’ Worship 62, no. 2 (March 1988): 123–38. 18. See John Witte Jr., From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition, ed. Don Browning and Ian S. Evison, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997). 19. Second Vatican Council. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen gentium, Solemnly Promulgated by His Holiness, Pope Paul VI on November 21, 1964. http:// www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/ vat-ii_const_ 19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html, VII. 50. 20. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, trans. D. C. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1963), 150. 21. Ibid., 126. 22. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. J. W. Edwards, O. Bussey, and H. Knight, vol. III.1, The Doctrine of Creation (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), x40, especially p. 22. 23. Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, 2. 10; emphasis added. 24. Ibid., 2. 11. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 2. 13. 27. Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods, D.D. (New York: Modern Library, 1993), preface of book I. 28. John M. G. Barclay, ‘‘The Family as the Bearer of Religion in Judaism and Early Christianity,’’ in Constructing Early Christian Families, ed. Halvor Moxnes (New York: Routledge, 1997), 76. 29. See, for example, George Armstrong Kelly, Politics and Religious Consciousness in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1984). Jean Bethke Elshtain also muses on this wrongheaded move of trying ‘‘to make Augustine fit into the canon of Western political thought.’’ Jean Bethke Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 22. 30. Michael J. Hollerich, ‘‘John Milbank, Augustine, and the ‘Secular,’ ’’ in History, Apocalypse, and the Secular Imagination: New Essays on Augustine’s City of God / Proceedings of a Colloquium Held at Green College, the University of British Columbia, 18–20 September 1997, ed. Mark Vessey, Karla Pollmann, and Allan D. Fitzgerald (Bowling Green, OH: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1997), 311.


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31. Augustine says in The City of God, for instance: ‘‘It follows plainly enough that domestic peace has a relation to civic peace—in other words, that the well-ordered concord of domestic obedience and domestic rule has a relation to the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and civic rule’’ (XIX. 16). But in chapter 17, we see that true peace is found in God; household and civic peace is only able to be present where worship of the one true God is not disrupted. 32. Augustine, The City of God, X. 3. 33. Ibid., VI. 9. 34. Ibid. 35. For instance, Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Magnanimous Man might be seen as operating outside the private, economic, household sphere. 36. Rowan Williams, ‘‘Politics and the Soul: A Reading of the City of God,’’ Milltown Studies no. 19/20 (1987): 63. 37. Ibid., 63–64. 38. This is not to say, however, that church/state/household relationships in the Middle Ages or earlier were theologically, politically, or socially healthy or appropriate. The reformers, particularly Martin Luther, had some claims well worth considering, concerning clericalism. The point is rather to emphasize one of the many results of the Enlightenment. Jacques Donzelot has given a worthy account of the state of affairs in France before the 1789 Revolution, for instance, that shows the form of the family being aligned too closely with that of the monarch. Donzelot suggests that the pre-Revolution family was patriarchal because it mirrored the relationship between the monarch and his subjects. Just as people gave allegiance to the king, who was the protective father figure of his loyal subjects, so children and wives gave allegiance to the male head of the household. See Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families foreword by Gilles Deleuze, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1979). 39. Augustine, The City of God, VIII. 12. 40. Ibid., IX. 15. 41. Ibid., IX. 17. 42. Ibid., X. 3. 43. Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 219’’, in Sermons (184–229z) on the Liturgical Seasons, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993). 44. Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 224,’’ in Sermons (184–229z) on the Liturgical Seasons, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993), x1. 45. Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 228,’’ in Sermons (184–229z) on the Liturgical Seasons, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993), x1. 46. Ibid. 47. Augustine, ‘‘Sermon 223d,’’ in Sermons (184–229z) on the Liturgical Seasons, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P., (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993), x3.

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48. On this point, it is not surprising to me that critics of Augustine might wrestle mightily with whether there is salvation by faith or by works and thus sidestep the question of praise. In the contemporary era, especially, worship and praise of God look inefficient, superfluous, and unattuned to so-called social justice matters. That is, why bother with having a beautiful church or well-executed liturgy when the more salient point for the Christian is whether the people outside the church walls have the food, clothing, and shelter that they need? Augustine forces us to consider the both/and aspects of liturgy and justice. He will not do away with the highest holy memorial feast days of the Church. Nor will he leave off moral exhortation in the sermons he preaches to the faithful at these memorial meals. Indeed, Augustine leaves us with the important question of whether there is any intelligible separation between liturgy and justice. Here, I think Augustine supports much current contention that liturgy ‘‘and’’ ethics is a false separation. Cf. Stanley Hauerwas, ‘‘Worship, Evangelization, Ethics: On Eliminating the ‘and,’ ’’ in Liturgy and the Moral Self, ed. E. Byron Anderson and Bruce T. Morrill, S.J. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998); Stamps, To Do Justice and Right upon the Earth. 49. Here I find myself in agreement with Gerald Bonner, who argues that for Augustine, ‘‘time intersects with eternity in the action of the [E]ucharist. In the [E]ucharist we experience, in some measure, the holy fellowship which we hope to enjoy forever in the Kingdom of Heaven and thus have a foretaste of eternity while still in the body.’’ See Gerald Bonner, ‘‘Augustine’s Understanding of the Church as a Eucharistic Community,’’ in Saint Augustine the Bishop: A Book of Essays, ed. Fannie LeMoine, Christopher Kleinhenz, and Commission for Lutheran–Anglican–Roman Catholic Relationships in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan (New York: Garland, 1994), 50–51. 50. Wannenwetsch, Political Worship, 155–156. 51. Ibid., 156.

chapter 7 1. Florence Caffrey Bourg, Where Two or Three Are Gathered: Christian Families as Domestic Churches (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), especially chapter 7. 2. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 187. 3. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 2003), 100. 4. W. H. Vanstone, The Stature of Waiting (London: Dartman, Longman and Todd, 1982); cited in Sarah Coakley, ‘‘Deepening Practices: Perspectives from Ascetical and Mystical Theology,’’ in Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life, ed. Miroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 83. 5. Ibid., 84. 6. Thanks to Dana Dillon for providing some conversation about virtue and ‘‘almost-virtue.’’


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7. Benedict, The Rule of Saint Benedict, trans. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1982), chapter 53. 8. Among these are David Robinson, The Family Cloister: Benedictine Wisdom for the Home (New York: Crossroads, 2000), and Wendy Wright, Sacred Dwelling: A Spirituality of Family Life (Leavenworth, KS: Forest of Peace Publishing, 1994). 9. Edward Kilmartin, Christian Liturgy: Theology and Practice (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1988), 73. 10. See especially chapter 1 in Laurence Hull Stookey, Eucharist: Christ’s Feast within the Church (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993). 11. Alexander Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 151–152. 12. See John Christopher Thomas, Footwashing in John 13 and the Johannine Community, vol. 61 of Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1991). 13. Mark Thiessen Nation, ‘‘Washing Feet: Preparation for Service,’’ in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, ed. Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 443. 14. Thomas E. Breidenthal’s book Christian Households: The Sanctification of Nearness (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1997) speaks more directly about intimacy and hospitality. See especially chapter 3. 15. Christine Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 56–57. 16. Tertullian, Apology, in Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, trans. S. Thelwell (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), chapter 39. 17. Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (New York: Seabury Press, 1982), 84. The whole of chapter 4 gives an interesting account of this question about the relationship between Jewish meals, the development of the Eucharist, and the secondcentury agape meals. 18. Pohl, Making Room, 45. 19. Breidenthal, Christian Households: The Sanctification of Nearness, 52. 20. David Matzko McCarthy, Sex and Love in the Home (London: SCM Press, 2001), 110. 21. William J. Doherty, cited in Katherine Anderson, Don Browning, and Brian Boyer, eds., Marriage: Just a Piece of Paper? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 20. 22. Donna Freitas and Jason King, ‘‘Sex, Time, and Meaning: A Theology of Dating,’’ Horizons 30, no. 1 (2003): 26. 23. McCarthy, Sex and Love in the Home, 19. 24. Ibid., 40. 25. Recall, for example, the several theologians mentioned in chapter 2, who focus on Augustine for his understanding of sexual passion. 26. Richard M. Hogan and John M. LeVoir, Covenant of Love: Pope John Paul II on Sexuality, Marriage and Family in the Modern World (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1986), 54–55.

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27. Angelo Cardinal Scola, The Nuptial Mystery, trans. Michelle K. Borras (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 237. 28. See, for example, especially chapters 4 and 5 in Stephen G. Post, More Lasting Unions: Christianity, the Family and Society, ed. Don Browning and John Wall (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000). 29. Kathryn D. Blanchard, ‘‘The Gift of Contraception: Calvin, Barth, and a Lost Protestant Conversation,’’ Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 27, no. 1 (Spring/ Summer 2007), 243. 30. Ibid. 31. Martin Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy, trans. Gerald Malsbary (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 114. 32. Ibid., 117. 33. For further detail on these points, see Donald X. Burt, Friendship and Society: An Introduction to Augustine’s Practical Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). 34. For example, see Amy Laura Hall, ‘‘Better Homes and Children: The Brave New World of Meticulously Planned Parenthood,’’ Books and Culture 11, no. 6 (Nov.– Dec. 2005): 18–20. See also her book, Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007). 35. This is suggested in Gilbert Meilaender, The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 118. 36. McCarthy, Sex and Love in the Home, 190. 37. 1 Corinthians 10:17. 38. Hall, ‘‘Better Homes and Children,’’18. 39. Julie Hanlon Rubio, A Christian Theology of Marriage and Family (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 4. 40. Ibid., 23. 41. Matthew 22:1–14. 42. See a discussion of this shift in thought about weddings in Rubio, A Christian Theology of Marriage and Family, 33–36.

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Index

abstinence, 177, 179–180, 183 adoption, 19, 115, 181, 185 Arcanum. See Leo XIII Aquinas, Thomas, 7, 77 Arendt, Hannah, 219n. 15 Augustine on creation in potentiality, 57–59, 203n. 10 and grace, 65, 92, 201n. 49 on memory, 38, 152–153 monastic community attributed to, 109 original sin, 69, 71 procreation, 62–64, 68, 70, 204n. 20 psalms, 49, 116, 118–123 relationships between men and women, 61–70, 76–78, 175, 186, 204n. 16 sacraments, 43–46, 216n. 24 scriptural commentary on Mary and Martha, 37–38, 199n. 13 sermons, 45, 116–117, 120, 123, 132, 151–153 sexual desire, 48, 96–97, 111–112, 182, 200n. 22, 202n. 51 three treatises on Genesis, 57, 90, 202n. 2 women, 40, 59–67, 76–78, 95–99, 217n. 36

See also Augustine, works of; celibacy, Augustine’s views on; chastity, Augustine’s views on Augustine, works of Adulterous Marriages, 75 The City of God, 34, 76–77, 139, 144, 146–153, 204n. 25 Confessions bodies, 151 eternal and temporal things, 124–125 gender, 217n. 36 home as motif in, 125–126, 217n. 34 memory, 38 salvation history in, 38, 57 The Excellence of Marriage, 38, 57, 61–65, 75, 180 The Excellence of Widowhood, 158 Exposition of Psalm 44, 120–122 Holy Virginity, 88, 96, 99, 212n. 43, 213n. 78 The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 57, 60, 62–63, 68–69, 91 On Marriage and Concupiscence, 68 Psalmus contra Partem Donati, 123 baptism and church membership, 169 creating new households, 103–107, 117–119, 143, 194n. 38

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baptism (continued) liturgy of, 44–45, 169 parenting, 181–182 in salvation history, 164 source of hospitality, 164–165 spiritual virginity, 106 See also sacrament Barclay, John, 145 Barth, Karl, 142 Benjamins, H.S., 40 betrothal. See cohabitation; engagements birth control. See contraception; natural family planning Blanchard, Kathryn D., 178 bodies, 16–19, 76, 151, 188 Body of Christ composed of married and unmarried members, 80, 105, 112, 131, 144, 189 gender and, 22–23, 77 sacraments and, 169–170, 188 See also church Bonner, Gerald, 222n. 49 Børresen, Kari Elizabeth, 67, 93, 212n. 47 Bourg, Florence Caffrey, 23, 30, 157 Breidenthal, Thomas E., 30, 166 Brown, Peter, 146 Browning, Don on religion and social institutions, 5–6, 49, 136 on stable, equal-regard families, 8, 21, 81, 84, 218n. 58 Burt, Donald X., 62 Butler, Judith, 50 Cahill, Lisa Sowle, 12–14, 18, 182, 192n. 16 Cavanaugh, William T., 138 celibacy abolishing, 86–87 Augustine’s views on, 38–43, 88–95, 99–112, 176–177, 207n. 61 contained within marriage, 18, 40, 75–76, 128–134, 176–177 distinct from marriage, 30, 38–40, 41–43, 130, 157–158, 176–177 distinct from singleness, 24, 84–85, 111–112 and eschatology, 17–42 and incorruptibility, 211n. 30 sexual abuse scandal, 87, 210n. 13

vowed, 24, 183, 214n. 98 See also abstinence; chastity; virginity chastity Augustine’s views on, 37–38, 42, 74–75, 88, 94–99, 103–110, 126 birth control and, 176–180 eschatology and, 42, 74, 160, 176–177 families and, 25 liturgy and, 126 in marriage, 23–24, 37–38, 74–75, 90–91, 179–181 in singleness, 23–24, 37–38, 88, 179, 182–183 virginity and, 90–91, 94–99, 104–107, 109–110 in widowhood, 97–99, 107–109 Chauvet, Louis-Marie, 17 childbearing. See procreation children as end of marriage, 62–65, 173, 180 foster care of, 19, 181 moral formation of, 14 See also adoption; procreation Chrysostom, John differing from Augustine, 59, 71, 78–80, 88–90, 98–99, 104 domestic church and, 11–13, 15–16 hospitality and, 166 on marriage and eschatology, 129 views on virginity, 79, 88–89, 98, 104 church Household of God, passim as polis and oikos, 45–46, 139–141, 149 proper relation to family, 4 See also Body of Christ; domestic church; households, relationship to Household of God; liturgy; sacraments Clark, Elizabeth A., 204n. 22, 207n. 76, 210–211n. 19 Clement of Alexandria, 129 cloning, 187 Cloutier, David, 129–130, 199–200 Coakley, Sarah, 50, 81, 160–161 cohabitation, 210n. 16 contraception, 40, 85 Catholic views of, 176–177 Protestant views of, 177–179 See also abstinence; natural family planning

index creation, 50, 55–57, 88–92, 135, 142 in potentiality, 57–59, 203nn. 10, 13 See also salvation history dating, 169–171 desire and consumer culture, 171–172, 181 disordered, 34, 48, 68–70, 90, 112, 182 individual desire, 168, 172, 174 oriented toward God, 47, 93, 96–97, 118, 133–134, 183 romantic, 171–172 sexual, 41, 48, 96, 182, 200n. 22, 202n. 51 See also Augustine, and sexual desire dichotomies gender, 20–23, 27, 55–56, 135 marriage and singleness, 23–26, 36, 56, 135, 185, 189 public/private, 26–28, 45, 51, 136, 171–172, 197n. 82 divorce, 138 Augustine and, 74, 82 contemporary problems with, 4–6, 9, 168–170, 198n. 2 Jesus and, 30, 80, 197n. 90, 215n. 15 Dix, Dom Gregory, 166 domestic church, 10–16, 25, 30, 143, 145, 157, 193n. 24 Donzelot, Jacques, 221n. 38 Duffy, Stephen J., 48 Eastern Orthodox theology, 27, 43–45, 50, 169, 188, 201n. 33 ecclesia minuscula. See domestic church ecumenism, 188 Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 146 engagements, 170. See also cohabitation Enlightenment, 26–27, 149 eschaton households and, 128–132, 154 partially-realized, 115–116 public/private dichotomy and, 135–136, 149 virginity in relation to, 17 See also salvation history Eucharist, 123, 152–153, 165–167. See also sacrament Fahey, Michael A., 10–11 fall, 43, 55, 65–69, 92–95, 206n. 47. See also salvation history

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Familiaris consortio, 4, 10, 13, 14, 16, 130 family allied with the state, 221n. 38 dependent, 185 diversity of, 197n. 93 as domestic church, 10–16 eschatological meaning, 8–9, 14–15, 194n. 44 image of the church, 116–119, 194n. 39 social problem, 4–6 theological problem, 24, 158, 178, 209n. 4 See also households; marriage feminism second-wave, 20, 196n. 62 and scripture scholarship, 36–37 third-wave, 20 Fiordelli, Pietro, 10–11, 13 Firestone, Shulamith, 20 foot washing, 163–164, 167 Foucault, Michel, 20 Freitas, Donna, 171 friendship with God, 65, 134 in marriage, 46, 55–56, 60–64, 173, 204nn. 16, 20 between men and women, 186 gender complementarity, 18–19 constructivist/essentialist debate and, 55 importance of distinctions in, 65, 76, 189 equality, 186, 212n. 47 Gregory of Nyssa on, 81, 201n. 46 nature of sin, 67 problem in theology of marriage, 3–4, 6–8, 12 reading scripture, 36–37 roles of men and women, 7, 20–23, 80–82, 186–187, 210n. 19, 216n. 16 theological views of, 80–82, 207n. 72 See also Augustine, on women; feminism; procreation, women and; women Gerhard, Jane, 196n. 62 Gregory of Nyssa, 44, 79, 81, 86, 118 Guroian, Vigen, 45, 141 Hall, Amy Laura, 187 Hauerwas, Stanley, 33, 45, 138–139, 159 Haustafeln. See household codes Hollerich, Michael J., 146

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household codes, 140 households, passim expansiveness of, 38, 80, 122, 132, 166, 172 numerous forms, 87, 174, 178–179, 181, 187 relationship to Household of God, 123, 132, 141–142, 158, 185 theology of, 25–26, 30, 42 See also family Hsu, Albert Y., 24 Humanae vitae, 177 Hunter, David, 39, 120, 212n. 43, 216n. 16 Israel, 71–72, 95–99, 111, 120, 212n. 55. See also salvation history in vitro fertilization, 187 Jerome, 39, 74, 78, 85, 87, 120, 133, 214n.99 John Paul II (pope) family as part of the church, 194n. 39 problems with the family, 4 Theology of the Body, 16–18, 176 virginity as eschatological future, 14, 39, 74, 115, 130 See also Familiaris consortio Jovinian, 39, 78, 85, 87, 209n. 10 Kant, Immanuel, 26–27 Kavanaugh, Aidan, 45 Kilmartin, Edward, 45, 163 King, Jason, 171 Kostenberger, Andreas, 21–22 Leo XIII (pope), 137–138 Lindbeck, George, 34 liturgy Easter Vigil, 44, 46, 117, 151–153 eternal and temporal character of, 123–128 as ethics, 219n. 17, 222n. 48 importance for marriage and singleness, 43–45 politics, 142 practices, 161 See also baptism; Eucharist; foot washing; sacrament Lumen gentium, 10, 14, 17, 144 Luther, Martin, 7, 23, 40, 43 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 27, 159 marriage

ends of, 62, 180 equality in, 192n. 16 and friendship, 46, 55–56, 61–62, 64, 173, 204n. 16 stable, equal-regard, 7–8, 218n. 58 unnecessary for Christians, 89, 205n. 28 See also sacrament, marriage as McCabe, Herbert, 122 McCarthy, David Matzko gender roles, 23, 186, 192n. 16 on overly-idealistic views of marriage, 13, 25, 184 relating marriage to baptism and Eucharist, 46 views of dating, 171–172 McGinnis, James and Kathleen, 11–12 Meilaender, Gilbert, 47 Melina, Livio, 43 Milbank, John, 139–140, 146–147 modernity, 6 monasticism, 183 Augustine and, 109–111 Benedictine, 161, 163, 167, 174 and marriage, 132, 159, 162 postulants and, 170 vows, 25, 183 See also New Monasticism natural family planning, 176–177, 180. See also contraception new creation, 45, 135, 164, 169 New Monasticism, 185 nuptial theology, 17–18, 25, 167. See also domestic church; Theology of the Body Nussbaum, Martha, 7, 192n. 12 oikos. See church, as polis and oikos Okin, Susan Moller, 7, 192n. 12 Otten, Willemien, 110 papal documents. See individual titles parenthood, 14, 28, 106, 118, 181 Parousia. See eschaton Paul VI (pope) 129, 210n. 14 polis. See church, as polis and oikos Post, Stephen G., 4, 24, 40, 42, 189, 208n. 1 procreation before the fall, 206n. 47 end of marriage, 68–74, 89–90, 95–99

index and friendship with God, 70, 71, 73 obeying God’s commandment, 63–65 unnecessary for Christians, 106, 181, 195 women and, 64, 68, 76, 204n. 20 Ramsey, Paul on Augustine’s views of sexuality, 68, 80–81, 82, 200n. 24 on Augustine’s vision of salvation history, 41–42, 70, 74, 88–89 redemption, 39–41, 72–73, 76–80, 99–105. See also salvation history Religion, Culture, and Family Project, 8, 158, 191n. 4, 194n. 49 Rhonheimer, Martin, 177 Rogers, Eugene F., 131 Roth, Catherine P., 78 Rubio, Julie Hanlon, 187, 192n. 16 Ruether, Rosemary Radford, 21–22 Sacerdotalis caelibatus, 129 sacrament Augustine and, 43–46, 216n. 24 baptism, 44–45, 116, 136, 141 daily life and, 165 God’s gift via ordinary elements, 122–125 grace and, 48–49 marriage as, 14, 16–18, 39–40, 74–75, 77 theological understandings of, 17 See also liturgy; baptism; Eucharist salvation history, 15, 18, 38–43, 111, 115, 163–164. See also baptism; creation; eschaton; Eucharist; fall; Israel; redemption Schmemann, Alexander, 116, 164 Schu¨ssler-Fiorenza, Elizabeth, 36 Scola, Angelo Cardinal, 16, 18–19, 174, 176 Second Vatican Council, 10, 14, 142. See also Lumen gentium sex, 63, 84, 171, 180–184. See also procreation singleness, 25–24, 84–88, 111, 197n. 77, 199n. 15. See also celibacy; dichotomies, marriage and singleness; divorce; monasticism; virginity; widowhood Thatcher, Adrian, 210n. 16 Theology of the Body, 16–19, 25. See also John Paul II; nuptial theology

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Thomas Aquinas. See Aquinas, Thomas Torchia, Joseph, 66 Vanstone, W. H., 160 Vatican II documents. See Lumen gentium; Second Vatican Council virginity Christ and, 100–101, 104 eschatology and, 110, 128–130 form of marriage in Eden, 60 John Chrysostom. See under Chrysostom, John Mary and, 106–213 physical and spiritual forms of, 103–104, 106–108, 211n. 23 people of Israel, 96 redemption, 85 state of life for all Christians, 91, 105–107 virtue, 74, 212n. 43 See also celibacy; chastity; widowhood virtue charity as, 152 chastity as. See chastity classical views of, 139–140 cultivating in households, 14–15, 27–28, 83, 158, 173, 175 humility as, 39, 88, 94, 99, 102, 143 loyalty as, 168 theological account of, 43, 159–163 See also virginity, physical and spiritual forms of von Balthasar, Hans Urs, 142 Wainwright, Geoffrey, 115 Wannenwetsch, Bernd, 27, 29, 45, 139–141, 154, 219n. 15 Wells, Samuel, 33, 45 widowhood, 97, 99, 107–108, 166, 183, 214n. 98. See also chastity, in widowhood Williams, Rowan, 148 Witte, John, 8–9 women, 20–23, 27, 76. See also Augustine, women; dichotomies, gender; feminism; friendship, between men and women; gender Wright, Wendy, 25 Yoder, John Howard, 138–139

Water Is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singlehood

Water Is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singlehood

Water is thicker than Blood

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

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Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Still Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Blood

Thicker Than Blood

Thicker Than Blood

Thicker Than Blood

Thicker Than Blood

Thicker Than Blood

Thicker Than Blood

Thicker Than Blood

Thicker Than Blood

Thicker Than Blood

Blood Is Quicker Than Water

Blood is Thicker

Thicker Than Water (Felix Castor 4)

Ties of Blood and Water

Water Is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singlehood